Voting begins Thursday for town elections

Voters who want to beat the crowd can start casting their municipal ballots in Orange County on Thursday.

Polling stations will open across the county to allow registered voters to cast their votes prior to the established Election Day on Nov. 5.

“Early voting this time around will be just the same as it always is,” said Tracy Reams, the director of the Orange County Board of Elections.

“Our early voting sites open on Oct. 17 and they close on Nov. 2.”

For the upcoming election, registered county voters have the opportunity to vote for several local government officers.

The Chapel Hill-Carrboro School Board will have three spots to fill.

Carrboro has five candidates running for three seats on the Board of Aldermen.

Chapel Hill will elect four of its nine candidates to the Town Council.

Hillsborough will elect two new town commissioners from its three candidates.

Carrboro, Chapel Hill and Hillsborough residents will all be electing mayors who are running unopposed.

Last year during the presidential election, more than 50,000 people in Orange County voted early.

Nearly one-fifth of those people voted in Rams Head Dining Hall.

“Last year I registered to vote here in Orange County,” said Celia Carnes, a UNC sophomore.

“I am from Alabama, where it’s hard to be a Democrat. I feel like my vote counts here.”

During the last municipal election in 2011, nearly 18,000 people in Orange County voted, but only 612 were 25 years old or younger, according to a report from the Orange County Board of Elections.

“I probably will not vote early unless I am out and about and I think of it,” said Lauren Gaillard, a UNC senior.

The county voting sites include the Board of Elections Office in Hillsborough, Carrboro Town Hall, Seymour Senior Center in Chapel Hill and the second floor of Rams Head Dining Hall on campus.

The dining hall location will be open 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Oct. 17, 18 and 21 through Nov. 1.

It will also be open Nov. 2 from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Other voting location hours are posted on the Orange County Board of Elections website.

“I’m not very informed right now, but I will probably vote towards the end of the early voting period,” said Christina Zhou, a UNC sophomore.

Registered voters who will be out of town during the voting period can request an absentee ballot.

Requests can be mailed to the the county’s Board of Elections up to a week before the election.

“I live in Raleigh so I am not registered to vote in Orange County,” said Chris Widin, a UNC sophomore.

“I usually stay here and vote by absentee ballot.”

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