Competitive races in both Burlington and Graham have been a real shot in the arm to voter turnout as early voting continues ahead of next week’s municipal elections.
As of Wednesday afternoon, a total of 1,990 voters had visited Alamance County’s elections office to make their selections in the various races which are underway in the county’s cities and towns.
According to the elections office, 1,182 of these early voters have hailed from Burlington, where a heated contest has developed between second-time mayoral candidate Beth Kennett and councilman Ronnie Wall, who did an earlier turn as the city’s mayor before he gave up the post a decade ago. Also on Burlington’s ballot is a four-way scramble for two city council seats that features the city’s former mayor Ian Baltutis; incumbent councilman Harold Owen; Jeff Smythe, the city’s retired police chief; and one-time mayoral candidate Donna Vanhook.
Meanwhile, 531 voters from Graham have registered their preferences in another competitive mayoral race that pits incumbent Jennifer Talley against challenger Chelsea Glen Dickey. This showdown coincides with a city council race where incumbent Bobby Chin faces challengers Daniel Alvis, Randy Phillips, and Jim Young for a pair of available seats.
The large number of voters who’ve weighed in on the races have had an outsized contribution on the overall turnout during this year’s early voting period. By time the polls closed on Tuesday, the turnout from Burlington and Graham had catapulted this year’s running total past the 1,549 early ballots that the elections office had amassed during the last round of municipal elections in 2023. In the meantime, area residents still had four more days to vote early ahead of the general election on November 4.
On Wednesday, the elections office reported an additional 263 votes, making it the highest one-day turnout during this year’s early voting period.
[Story continues below chart of election turnout.]
According to county’s elections director Dawn Hurdle, this brisk demand may ultimately match the figures from 2021, when a total of 2,353 people voted early in Alamance County. That year’s volume was, likewise, ramped up by closely-watched mayoral races in Burlington and Graham, which ultimately saw Talley secure the gavel in the county seat while Baltutis lost his position as Burlington’s mayor to then-city councilman Jim Butler.
Under the state-imposed schedule for this year’s early voting period, residents have generally had to visit the local elections office between 8:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. on weekdays in order to cast ballots ahead of the general election. The elections office also opened its doors for two hours on Sunday, October 26 to accommodate voters who work during the week. The early voting schedule also calls for another round of weekend polling on Saturday, November 1, which will require the elections office to open back up from 8:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m.
Hurdle insisted that, by and large, her staff hasn’t had much trouble meeting the demand for early voting so far this year.
“Our busiest day was Sunday,” she recalled in an interview Tuesday. “We were only open for two hours that day, and it was the first day we had a line out the door.”
