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Wednesday, November 5, 2008
Absentee vote counting delayed final results in Pitt
The outcome of many contested general election races remained uncertain until late Tuesday because of vote counting in Pitt County.
Officials were busy opening and counting more than 2,300 mail-in absentee ballots from 2-10:30 p.m., Elections Director Dave Davis said.
The process delayed the input of those votes and about 50,000 One Stop early voting ballot records into a computer system that tabulated them with voting that took place on Tuesday.
“We had all three (elections) board members, two full-time staff and two part-time staff opening up envelopes and straightening (the ballots) out,” Davis said.
Because the ballots are folded to fit into the return envelopes, some papers had to be inserted numerous times into scanners that recorded the ballots.
A total of 51,032 people, nearly 67 percent of Pitt County’s registered voters, voted absentee or cast ballots during the three-week One Stop early voting period, according to preliminary election data. Just under 30 percent of the votes were cast on Tuesday.
As a result, races for Pitt County Board of Commissioners and state House and Senate remained uncertain until those totals were entered about 11 p.m.
In the Board of Commissioners District B race, Democratic challenger Ephraigm Smith led Republican Tom Coulson in ballots cast Tuesday. He won by 312 votes once all ballots were counted.
In the state Senate District 5 race, Republican Louis M. Pate Jr. led in Pitt County votes cast on Election Day, but Democrat Don Davis won in Greene and Wayne counties, which also make up the district.
When Pitt County’s early voting results were released, Davis won Pitt County by a narrow margin.
Statewide contests, including races for governor, lieutenant governor and president, each had margins of fewer than 30,000 votes at 11 p.m., with most North Carolina counties reporting all their votes.
Pitt County voting totals, dominated by Democratic balloting, helped Democrats Beverly Perdue, Walter Dalton and Barack Obama widen margins in those races.
The Pitt County Board of Elections has a practice of counting the mail-in absentee ballots prior to entering those totals and the One Stop records into the state system, Davis said.
Davis said Tuesday officials were caught off guard by the large number of paper ballots. They have been able to count them quickly in the past. No discussion had taken place about altering the practice of counting them before loading the computerized One Stop records, he said.
Compared to the 2004 presential election — when long lines delayed the release of some results until nearly 3 a.m. — Tuesday’s count went smoothly, Davis said.
“For a presidential election, for us to be done before 11 p.m., I think we have performed admirably, the board and the staff,” he said.
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Pitt voting boosts Democrats, mirrors statewide results
General election races in Pitt County on Tuesday mirrored statewide results with Democrats winning most of the county’s votes.
Among the top tier of federal and state races, incumbent U.S. Rep. Walter Jones was the only Republican returned to office by Pitt County voters.
Locally, Democrat Ephraigm Smith defeated Republican incumbent Tom Coulson for the Pitt County Board of Commissioners’ District B seat.
The voting followed regional and statewide trends, where returns garnered Democratic victories for Beverly Perdue for governor, Kay Hagan for U.S. Senate and Don Davis for state Senate. President-elect Barack Obama also holds a lead in North Carolina but the race remains too close for state election officials to call.
Pitt election officials will spent the next week preparing for the final voter canvass on Nov. 14, said Dave Davis, county elections director. From that, staff will collect demographic data on Tuesday’s vote.
A preliminary look at the numbers shows 74,130 Pitt County residents voted. Out of those ballots, 49,486 were cast during the three-week One-Stop, Early Voting period and 2,335 were absentee mail-in votes, according to the state Board of Elections’ data on Pitt County’s presidential vote. About 22,000 people voted on Tuesday.
The numbers constituted a record-breaking turnout for the county, besting chart-topping numbers from the 2004 general election. Then, 55,070 or 58.80 percent of the 93,656 registered voters cast ballots.
Here is a breakdown of Pitt County’s unofficial elections results:
U.S. President
Obama/Biden (Dem): 39,763
McCain/Palin (Rep): 33,429
other votes: 443
U.S. Senate
Kay Hagan (Dem): 40,562
Elizabeth Dole (Rep): 30,891
Christopher Cole (Lib):1,527
WRITE-IN: 25
Governor
Beverly Perdue (Dem): 43,308
Pat McCrory (Rep): 28,173
Michael C. Munger (Lib): 1,486
1st Congressional District
G.K. Butterfield (Dem): 17,825
Dean Stephens (Rep): 6,574
3rd Congressional District
Craig Weber: 18,487
Walter Jones: 29,081
State Senate District 5
Don Davis (Dem): 18,543
Louis M. Pate Jr. (Rep) 18,211
State House District 9
Marian McLawhorn (Dem): 24,632
Ginny Cooper: (Rep): 14,887
County Commissioner District B
Ephraigm Smith (Dem): 12,027
Tom Coulson (Rep): 11,712
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Political expert: Republicans will bounce back
The Republican Party will bounce back from its significant losses in last night’s election, an East Carolina University political expert says.
Jody Baumgartner, assistant professor of political science at ECU, said gloom surrounding the GOP is understandable, but common among parties losing a presidential election.
“You are going to get that after every presidential loss,” Baumgartner said. “Some of it makes sense, but some of it is just overreaction. We heard the same thing from the Democratic Party in 2004, and look at how things have changed.”
Baumgartner said he believes the unprecedented success of Barack Obama’s campaign, and the inability of Republican presidential nominee John McCain to excite people, played a large role in Obama’s ascent to the White House.
The presidential election, Baumgartner says, highlighted an uneasy alliance that exists between fiscal conservatives, social conservatives and foreign policy hawks.
“Those groups are sort of the three components of the Republican Party, and this election highlighted the fact that there was no consensus candidate among them,” Baumgartner said.
Baumgartner said he believes Democrats were able to broaden their control of Congress during this year’s election due to the effects of an unpopular Republican president and an unpopular war.
Democrats are guaranteed at least a 56-44 majority in the Senate and a 252-172 majority in the House. Some races remained undecided.
But Baumgartner says people shouldn’t read too much into the current state of Congress.
“I have trouble with pinning too much significance on one thing,” Baumgartner said. “What we know about American politics is the more things seem to change, the more they actually look the same that they always have. Every time a party loses an election, they cannibalize each other for a little while, but then they bounce right back. It is a two-party system, and one of them has not died.”
