Thursday, August 11, 2011
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Thursday, August 11, 2011 |
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Community | Obits | Editorial & Columnists | Society | Sports | Education | Classified Ads | Calendar of Events | Features | Newsbriefs | Legals | Archives | Subscriptions | Photo Gallery |
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Runoff Aug. 23 By SUE WATSON
Election night fever was all over the Holly Springs court square last week as a large crowd turned out to await the election returns. All parking slips around the square were taken the night of August 2 and the courtroom was nearly full at times. Election workers had a long evening scanning absentee ballots and curbside ballots and the final unofficial results were available around 11:30 p.m. Circuit clerk Lucy Carpenter said the election went smoothly for the most part, with not too many dissatisfied voters at the polls. “It was a real good day and the machines worked well,” she said. There is still some voter confusion about having a separate Republican Party and Democratic Party ballot, she said. Some people do not yet understand that the primary elections are held separately by each party and that they cannot vote for all the candidates in the race. Most of the local candidates, not all, run on the Democratic ticket while many candidates for state offices run on the Republican ticket. So, sometimes the public is dismayed that they have to choose the Democratic ballot in the primary if they want to vote for their local candidates in the primaries. Many people are moving in from Tennessee where they are used to open primaries, Carpenter said. Poll workers returned their boxes early because the ballots were short this time, Carpenter said. There was a disappointing 50 percent turnout, less than some people expected, according to election commissioner Marie Palmer. She said she expected at least 15,000 to vote, as many as in the last presidential election. Palmer said the election night crowd was very big compared to the turnout four years ago. “My niece who brought the Mt. Pleasant box in said there was no parking around the courthouse,” Palmer said. “She said they liked to have never found a parking place. I guess there was so much to do this time. The courtroom was full.” The election night workers have had trouble getting the election totals to come up for public viewing in the courtroom as they are counted, Palmer said. They were able to get the screen to come up in the room where they were counting the votes after a while, but could not get the totals to go over the Internet into the courtroom, she said. Officials passed around printouts to the public as they became available, she said. Palmer, in her 15th year as an election commissioner, and Betty Whaley, in her 19th, helped election night as paid workers but not in their official capacity, she said, since the parties actually handle the primary elections. |
     
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