Municipality voters decide; voter turnout small

By Chuck Thompson | The Shelby Independent

Tuesday's elections across municipalities in Cleveland County brought about new changes, familiar faces retained their seats, and also some questions, such as who won the Lattimore mayoral race?

The town of Lawndale held a mixed beverage election, which resulted in a tie, with exactly 31 votes for, and 31 votes against.

But the startling, yet somewhat expected, story about Tuesday was the low turnout of for local elections. Only 7% of registered voters cast a ballot, but it also should be noted that less than half of Cleveland County voters actually live in municipalities.

This is where many reporters would compare the 2024 election, causing an unfair comparison, eliciting a response form the reader in a manipulative form. This would be unfair.

At The Shelby Independent, it is this news outlet's belief that readers are smart enough to decide for themselves without the manipulation to sway your thoughts, because that would be insulting to you - which is why so many people have abandoned mainstream media, seeing right through their manipulation. So, we're going to skip last year's results; it's comparing apples and oranges. If you really want to know, you can look it up yourself. It has nothing to do with Tuesday's election.

Let's compare to a few other counties. How did Cleveland County's voter turnout fair to the some of our neighboring counties Tuesday? Lower. Not all information was available at the publication of this article, but from what was found, of the counties that reported on time, Cleveland County had a lower rate than others (which is subject to change once more information is made available).

Gaston County had a 16.16% turnout, more than twice that of Cleveland. Burke County pulled in 12.12% of voters to cast a ballot, and Mecklenburg County had almost 22% show up to vote; but let's not fool ourselves, because there's not a lot of non-municipality areas in Mecklenburg, so this is an unfair comparison that could have not been mentioned and would be misleading to some of you that might not have considered this, so in good faith, a 22% turnout in Mecklenburg is incomparable to a 7% turnout in Cleveland County.

Records show that roughly 27,500 of the 65,000 registered voters in Cleveland County reside in municipality areas. Let's take into account deaths and new registered voters just old enough to vote and some areas designated municipal, but may or may not qualify, and use an easy number of 27,000 eligible voters from Tuesday. While the numbers were low, it still was democracy at work and roughly 7% or 4,670 people turned out to vote.

Below is the full list of unofficial municipal election results:

CLEVELAND COUNT WATER BOARD COMMISSIONER

Amy Elliott Bridges 1,573   35.21%

C.J. Pete Pedersen 1,310   29.32%

Don Melton 1,047   23.43%

Write-In (Misc.) 538      12.04%

TOWN OF BELWOOD BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

Susan W. Jolley 50         51.55%

Amy Lutz  47             48.45%

TOWN OF BELWOOD BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS (UNEXPIRED)

Vernon Beaver 51       98.08%

Write-In (Misc.) 1           1.92%

TOWN OF BOILING SPRINGS MAYOR

Tommy C. Greene 279       92.08%

Write-In (Misc.) 24         7.92%

TOWN OF BOILING SPRINGS TOWN COUNCIL

Patrick Litton 243      39.64%

Marty L. Thomas 212      34.58%

Justin W. Davis 156      25.45%

Write-In (Misc.) 2           0.33%

TOWN OF CASAR MAYOR

Eddie Walker 15     100.00%

Write-In (Misc.) 0           0.00%

TOWN OF CASAR COMMISSIONERS

Harrill Brackett 15         34.09%

Debbie Morgan 15         34.09%

Sharon Moses 14         31.82%

Write-In (Misc.) 0           0.00%

TOWN OF EARL MAYOR

Derrick Brooks 17      100.00%

Write-In (Misc.) 0           0.00%

TOWN OF EARL TOWN COUNCIL MEMBERS

Patrick Allen 17         25.76%

Debbie Anderson 16         24.24%

Amy Buff 15      22.73%

Sheree Dotson 10        15.15%

Kevin Rindone 8          12.12%

Write-In (Misc.) 0           0.00%

TOWN OF FALLSTON MAYOR

Emily Willis Sisk  47         83.93%

Alan Harrelson 6           10.71%

Write-In (Misc.) 3           5.36%

TOWN OF FALLSTON COUNCIL MEMBER

Judy Searcy 51       50.50%

Rhonda Porter 47       46.53%

Write-In (Misc.) 3           2.97%

TOWN OF GROVER COMMISSIONER

Margaret P. Ledford 34         36.17%

Thor Inman 27         28.72%

Kathryn Roberts 27         28.72%

Write-In (Misc.) 6           6.38%

CITY OF KINGS MOUNTAIN CITY COUNCIL AT-LARGE

Scott Neisler 723       47.60%

Phil Dee 403       26.53%

Curtis Pressley 332       21.86%

Bruce W. King 29          1.91%

Jason Nail 22         1.45%

Write-In (Misc.) 10         0.66%

CITY OF KINGS MOUNTAIN CITY COUNCIL WARD 02

Tyler Fletcher 68        40.48%

Mike Butler 62        36.90%

Tim Sanders 34        20.24%

Write-In (Misc.) 4           2.38%

CITY OF KINGS MOUNTAIN CITY COUNCIL WARD 03

Heather Lemmond  89         41.98%

Ke'Shawn A. Strong 74         34.91%

Chris Pullen 49         23.11%

TOWN OF KINGSTOWN MAYOR

Janet Lynch Gerald 92         100.00%

TOWN OF KINGSTOWN TOWN COUNCIL

Ashley Linder 81         39.13%

Betty B. Hamrick 63         30.43%

Morrio Clark 62         29.95%

Write-In (Misc.) 1           0.48%

TOWN OF LATTIMORE MAYOR

Write-In (Misc.) 28         60.87%

Jackson Martin 18         39.13%

TOWN OF LATTIMORE ALDERMAN

Vickie Jones 44         32.84%

Brandon L. Ruppe 41         30.60%

Alton G. Beal 36         26.87%

Write-In (Misc.) 13         9.70%

TOWN OF LAWNDALE MAYOR

Ray Padgett 41         67.21%

Braydan Chapman 20         32.79%

Write-In (Misc.) 0           0.00%

TOWN OF LAWNDALE BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

Paula Eaker 45         46.39%

Reece McRorie 39         40.21%

Write-In (Misc.) 13         13.40%

TOWN OF MOORESBORO TOWN COUNCIL

Tom Whitaker  20         39.22%

Write-In (Misc.) 13         25.49%

Teresa McCurry  11         21.57%

J. Herbst 7          13.73%

TOWN OF PATTERSON SPRINGS BOARD OF COMMISSIONERS

Bobby Horton 37         31.90%

Randy Carothers 32         27.59%

Amy H. Hope 20        17.24%

Susie Shook 16       13.79%

Write-In (Misc.) 11         9.48%

The Shelby Independent wishes to congratulate the winners, and all the candidates, for their hard effort and participation in democracy on the local level.

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Chuck Thompson is a reporter and columnist for The Shelby Independent.