Early voting numbers low

Skip McCall may have said it best during his introduction of the candidate forum held at the Shiloh AME Zion Church Thursday night.

McCall borrowed a few lines from Abraham Lincoln’s famed “Gettysburg Address.”

“A nation for the people and by the people needs the people to make it work,” McCall said.

McCall said the debate was being held to allow residents to meet the candidates and get a feel for where they stand. But, perhaps more so, he was calling on them to vote.

At a church meeting last Sunday, the sermon - so to speak - delivered by the Rev. Sam Thomas was the same.

“I can’t tell you who to vote for,” Thomas said. “But I can tell you to vote.”

But so far, that message and others like it have apparently fallen on deaf ears. And turnout for this year’s elections may hit an all-time low.

If the nearly nonexistent trickle of voters who have taken advantage of the so-called One-Stop voting is any indicator, the winners of the two Statesville City Council seats being contested may do so on the strength of family members and a few friends from around the corner.

Through Friday afternoon, only 35 people had taken advantage of the early voting program.

“It’s been very light,” said Polly Cook, Iredell County’s deputy elections director. “We get maybe two or three people a day.”

Cook compared that to the last presidential election. “There were lines going around the corner before we even opened in the morning,” she said. “We were doing several thousand people per day then.”

Cook said most of the votes cast so far have involved the two seats - Ward 3 and Ward 6 - in which three candidates each are on the ballot.

Two other seats are essentially guaranteed to the incumbents - Michael Johnson in Ward 4 and Paula Steele in Ward 1- as they are without opposition and could only conceivably loose to a write-in candidate. Cook said the low turnout in the early voting is a pretty good indicator of the how the Oct. 9 election day will proceed.

Early voting numbers low

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