THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, October 27, 1996 TAG: 9610270156
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: NORTH CAROLINA
SOURCE: BY MASON PETERS, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HERTFORD LENGTH: 46 lines
Unless you have lived in Perquimans County for a hundred years and are mathematically comfortable with the square root of minus one, you may have a hard time understanding how one vote will squeeze four candidates into three vacancies on the six-member county board on election day.
It's really not all that complicated.
Each voter is allowed to cast a ballot for only one candidate. The top three vote-getters Nov. 5 will be declared winners to the Perquimans County board.
These are the county commissioner candidates:
L. Wayne Howell, 54, a Democrat.
Archie Miller, 48, an incumbent Democrat.
Shirley Yates, 63, an incumbent Democrat.
Bert Hayes, 62, who is unaffiliated but has Republican support.
They will serve four years - maybe. There is a move afoot to change the selection system for county commissioners.
For the present, the three winning vote-getters in the coming elections will join three incumbents: Matt Nixon, the chairman, Charles Ward and Evelyn Stubbins.
This year's new commissioners will take the oath and begin their terms in December.
Stubbins was appointed to fill the unexpired term of David Bines, a Perquimans County commissioner who died in office last year.
Meanwhile, Perquimans County leaders are expected to try to change the system for electing commissioners.
This is only the second time that a new voting plan mandated by the U.S. Justice Department under voting rights guidelines has been tested in Perquimans.
Several commissioners last week said the new voting system was not popular and speculated that changes could be expected in the next four years.
It is a sensitive issue, and none of the present commissioners wanted to be quoted by name.
``We'll probably try to increase the number of commissioners to seven,'' said one commissioner. ``That would at least give us a tiebreaker.''
KEYWORDS: PERQUIMANS COUNTY BOARD CANDIDATE ELECTION NORTH
CAROLINA by CNB