Clallam County voters have until tonight to choose the county’s first elected Department of Community Development director, name a county commissioner and even decide if county commissioners should be elected by districts.
Voters can also opt to approve a one-tenth of 1 percent sales tax to improve the county’s 9-1-1 emergency communications system.
Residents of Port Angeles and Sequim are electing City Council members, and those in the Port Angeles, Sequim and Crescent school districts are electing board members.
Today is General Election Day 2003, which in all-mail Clallam County ends a three-week voting period that began when ballots were distributed Oct. 15.
Mail-in ballots must be postmarked today, or deposited by 8 p.m. in a county drop box.
The boxes can be found at the County Courthouse, 223 E. Fourth St., Port Angeles, at Forks District Court, 500 E. Division St., or at the Sequim Motor Vehicle Licensing Office, 1001 E. Washington St.
County Auditor Cathleen McKeown, whose department oversees elections, said the public is invited to the Emergency Operations Center basement of the courthouse tonight to see election results posted like in days past.
Beginning at 8 p.m., vote results will be posted by precinct as they were two years ago — before the county switched to all-mail balloting.
As in the past, it could take more than a week before final results are in.
McKeown said she decided to reinstate the old system of displaying results at the courthouse after she received several complaints from voters who liked the old system.
“We thought we would give it a chance,” McKeown said Monday.
“Then we will evaluate it, and if doesn’t work, we go back to old system.”
As of Monday afternoon, McKeown said 14,433 — or 35.9 percent of the 40,199 ballots mailed out to voters in mid-October — were returned to the Auditor’s Office.
That compares with 18,014, or 44.57 percent, received the same day in 2002 after 40,414 ballots were mailed out, McKeown said.
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The rest of the story appears in Tuesday’s Peninsula Daily News Clallam County edition.