Voter turnout high for primary contest

A surprising 27.7 percent of Alleghany County's registered voters showed up at the polls Tuesday to cast ballots in the primary election.

In other words, in unofficial results released around 10 p.m. Tuesday night, 1,728 of the county's 6,222 registered voters cast ballots, counting absentee and one-stop voters. Of those voting 537 cast Republican ballots and 1,191 cast Democratic ballots.

Of registered voters, 1,850 are Republicans, 3,638 are Democrats, six are registered as Libertarians and 728 are registered unaffiliated.

All of the vote and voter totals printed in this edition are unofficial and will remain so until the votes are canvassed later this week.

Despite an apparent apathy in early voting prior to last week's edition, one-stop voter turnout improved prior to last Friday's deadline.

Board of Elections Chairman Ed Adams said 208 people utilized the one-stop option, while 47 cast traditional paper absentee ballots.

"It was fairly light, but for a primary, it's not unusual," said Adams. The last primary election, which was held in May of 2000, had only a 14 percent voter turnout.

"We keep doing things to get more voter interest," Adams said. "We were open here (one-stop) for three weeks. That's going to continue, I think. As people learn about it, there's going to be more (participation)." Adams said that the unusual primary date may not have had an affect on turnout.

"I don't know if it would have made more difference if it had been held in May," he noted. "There were a lot of candidates out there and campaigning was about as vigorous as usual from what I saw."

As for the local races, all of which were in the Democratic primary, all of the county's incumbents seeking re-election made a strong showing. Current Chairman Ken E. Richardson was the top vote-getter in the Democratic primary for county commission, netting 806 votes. Second was incumbent Charity Gambill, with 765 votes.

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