By Blake Proctor
With member Emery White excused absent, Board Chair Louella Thompson called the June 8th meeting of the Bladen County Board of Elections to order at 5 pm and then gave the floor to Executive Director Chris Williams.
Mr. Williams started off by informing the Board that, as the office has been doing the last several months between election, they are still in a business-as-usual operations mode of adding and purging names in the voter rolls, and performing other routine administrative tasks.
He then turned to the topic on everyone’s mind: the upcoming municipal elections. He confirmed that, for 58 of the state’s 100 counties – those counties which had statistically significant changes in population, either new residents or movements between precincts – municipal elections will be during the primaries next May.
For the other 42 counties – including Bladen County – that have had very little growth or movement of residents between precincts, the election cycle shall continue being held on the first Tuesday of November, this year, the 2nd.
All traditional July filing periods and deadlines will remain the same as in prior years for those 42 counties holding municipal elections this November; those for the other 58 counties have not yet been established.
Of special interest was an announcement that training would be held for Campaign Treasurers of all candidates as well as the two political parties. This one-day training will be held in August, although a specific date has not yet been established by the North Carolina Board of Elections.
The session will be open to any interested parties, from any county, and the public is cordially invited and encouraged to attend. A firm date will be announced by Mr. Williams’ office once it has been determined by the NCBOE.
Poll worker retention and training schedules were discussed. As in prior years, the county GOP and Democrat Party chairmen are to recruit qualified poll worker candidates from their respective parties for consideration.
Each Party chairman must submit those names to the Board of Elections by the Tuesday following the 3rd Monday in August; the Board will make poll worker selections from those lists only. Also from those lists, precinct Judges are selected; Judge training will be held in August following their selection.
*Prior to adjournment, the Board was advised that the towns of White Lake, Elizabethtown, and Bladenboro have opted in for One-stop voting in November.
There being no further business to come before the Board, the meeting adjourned at 5:23 pm.
*A correction was made to the previously published article.
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