For more information regarding the March 15 primary, click here.
Choice in America is a given.
Whereas lots of choices can be a good thing, it can also lead to frustration.
With elections, numerous choices can lead some to use an “eeny, meeny, miney, moe” strategy for choosing candidates, especially in a remote area such as Ocracoke where information is most frequently obtained on the Internet.
While the League of Women voters in many counties prepares voter’s guides, Hyde County does not have one of these organizations.
At the time of the ballot printing for the March 15 primary, when you count them all up, there are more than 80 candidates of various parties, or unaffiliated, for the myriad of national, statewide and local elected seats. You can view the entire ballot here.
While those candidates are divided among Democrats, Republicans, Libertarians and unaffiliated, voters will still be tasked with researching all of the candidates in their parties.
We hope they take advantage of the many online sources available for this research. A good resource to check out is Ballotpedia.com. Specifically for North Carolina elections, click here. The Raleigh News&Observer also has a voter’s guide online. Click here.
The Ocracoke Observer has helped by highlighting two important races affecting Ocracoke–that of the county commissioner who will represent Ocracoke and that of the N.C. State House District 6 seat, which is up for grabs since incumbent Paul Tine decide last year not to run again.
For county commissioner, Ocracoke Democratic voters and those unaffiliated voters who opt to vote using the Democratic ballot, have the choice of incumbent John Fletcher and challenger Tom Pahl for this seat. There are no candidates of any other parties in this race.
So, barring a write-in campaign for the general election in November, one of these men will be our representative. You can read their views by clicking here
As for the important N.C. State House seat, the Observer contacted the two Republican candidates, Beverly Boswell of Kill Devil Hills and Ashley Woolard of Washington. Neither responded to our request to answer questions.
However, the two Democratic candidates for this seat, Judy Justice and Warren Judge did. Their responses, can be found here.
We also have a response from incumbent Walter Jones for U.S. Congressional District 3 here, and one from a challenger to Richard Burr’s U.S. Senate seat here.
Four mainland men are running for two seats for the Hyde County Board of Education, and we regret that we do not have information on these gentlemen except that Thomas Whitaker and Randy Etheridge are incumbents.
So, we urge voters to do your homework so you can vote responsibly.
We strongly urge not to vote for a candidate just because there are offices on the ballot. Choosing a random candidate just to complete a ballot is unfair to the candidates who are up for election.
