Pamlico filings still short of available seats

BAYBORO  — Municipal filings picked up for nine Pamlico County towns Monday with the beginning of the final week to get on the Nov. 3 ballot.

After nine candidates filed in the first week, that total was nearly doubled Monday, with  six incumbents and one newcomer paying their $5 filing fee at the elections office in the county courthouse.

The newcomer is Bob Cowden of Oriental, who filed for one of five at-large seats.

Also filing for the Oriental board was incumbent David Cox, the first of the current board member to seek re-election. Mayor Bill Sage filed last week.

Monday’s other filers include two incumbent mayors — Stonewall’s Charles Alexander and Vandemere’s Judy Thaanum.

Others filings were for board seats, including Admire Gibbs in Mesic, Mike Cuthrell in Alliance and Margaret Rose in Vandemere.

With the filing deadline at noon Friday, 31 seats remain open, including the mayoral jobs in Bayboro, Minnesott Beach, Mesic and Arapahoe. Alliance does not have mayor posted on its ballot. The highest vote-getter among commissioner candidates traditionally gets the job.

Elections supervisor Lisa Bennett said any seats that do not have a declared candidate will be decided through write-in votes.

Pamlico town elections normally have some undeclared seats and write-in votes are not unusual. But, Bennett said a significant number would make for a long election night.

“It doesn’t really create problems,” she said. “At the end of the night with the machines we use  — the direct record machines — I have to go through the tapes.”

Write-in names are keyed into the voting machines by voters. There is a write-in space for each seat; so on a five-member board, there would be five write-in spaces. But, a write-in can only be counted once on each ballot, so she has to check that a voter didn’t put a write-in name multiple times on a single ballot.

“It just takes me longer to count them and they have to be (elections) board approved,” she said.

A write-in name is checked against the registered voter list since an elected official must be a registered voter.

For information call the Pamlico County Elections Office at 745-4821.