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Election results official
Voters face three elections in 2006
By Lee Raynor Editor
Update: Wednesday, November 16, 2005
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Staff photo
Oscar Herring, center, and Dorothea Branch, left,listen as Dana King, head of the Lenoir County Board of Elections, finishes the canvassing work for the Nov. 8 Kinston municipal elections. Herring and Branch are members of the elections board. | Canvassers at the Lenoir County Board of Elections made last week’s election results official Tuesday.
The results remained the same, but final counts differed slightly with the inclusion of 77 provisional votes.
Thirty-one percent of Kinston’s 14,920 eligible voters, or 4,596 people, cast ballots in the municipal elections.
Buddy Ritch’s final vote count for mayor was 2,270, or 306 votes ahead of political newcomer B.J. Murphy, who had 1,964, for a difference of 306 votes. Ritch ran on the Democrat ticket. Murphy is a Republican.
Write-in candidates received 134 votes in the mayoral race.
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Incumbent City Councilman Jimmy Cousins scored the highest vote total of any candidate on the ballot with 2,918. Challenger Robert Swinson IV, another political newcomer, came in second with 2,432 votes to take the second open seat on the council. Incumbent Gordon Vermillion, with 2,193 votes, lost his seat. Cousins and Swinson are Democrats. Vermillion switched his party affiliation from Democrat to Republican nearly a year ago.
Dana King, head of the elections board, said the two earlier primary races cost the city between $24,000 and $30,000. Kinston, she said, is one of only five municipalities in North Carolina that continues to hold partisan elections.
Voters will be summoned to the polls at least two times next year, and possibly three. Elections are scheduled for May, June and November unless the states decides to redistrict again. The last redistricting delayed voting in Lenoir County for months.
The May ballot will present primary races for the Lenoir County Board of Education, Lenoir County Board of Commissioners, sheriff, state Legislature, congressional and judicial seats, and county clerk of courts. A runoff, if necessary, will be held in June, with the General Election scheduled for Nov. 7. |
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