VAIDEN — Four people have qualified to run for Carroll County School Board posts – three in Beat 3 and one in Beat 4.
In Beat 3, incumbent Ben Shute has qualified, along with Daniel Best and Dwayne Coward. Shute is the current board president.
Beat 4 incumbent Laura Davis has qualified to run again with no opposition. Davis is seeking her fifth term on the board.
In the race for county election commissioner, only one seat is contested, but Beat 1 has an unusual situation after the death of longtime commissioner Don Perkins. Because Perkins died after the qualifying deadline, write-in votes for the position will be counted, Circuit Clerk Durward Stanton said. April Neill has qualified to run.
Christy Noah, who was appointed commissioner to fill a seat in Beat 5 until the election after a resignation, is running for a regular term. She is opposed by James Stovall.
In Beat 2, Edward Corder is unopposed, as is Carolyn Summerville in Beat 3.
Stanton hopes to have the ballots ready by the end of the month but right now is “at the mercy of the Secretary of State’s office,” he said.
“We have completed stage one of four stages in ballot preparation but have to wait until we hear from their office to go on with the next stage,” he said. “Just as soon as we get the information from them, we will complete stage two and keep the process moving.”
Stanton said he hoped they would have absentee ballots by the end of September. Ballots have been sent to members of the military, but they are not in scannable form and will have to be transferred to scannable documents.
The state and national part of the ballot is transmitted electronically, so only local information must be approved and readied, Stanton said.
