And now there are five – five, that is, candidates for three seats on the Wake Forest Town Board.
The fifth candidate is Brian R. Clemson who lives with his wife, Dana, and their four boys ages 18, 15, 11, and 8 in the Crenshaw Hall subdivision. He works in computer networking and network security for AT&T. He has lived in Wake Forest for 17 years and says he filed for the board last Thursday, July 16, because he wants to give something back to the town and thought he could do that on the town board. He said he has not served on any of the town’s advisory boards.
The filing period ended at noon last Friday. With Clemson, the four candidates are retired Long Island, New York firefighter Chad Casale Sr., who lives in Traditions ; incumbent Commissioner and retired Wake Forest police chief Greg Harrington, who lives in Crenshaw Manor; realtor Brian Pate, who lives in Heritage; and incumbent Commissioner Anne Reeve, who lives in Staffordshire. The Gazette will provide interviews with all five candidates and weekly questions and answers about town matters starting in September.
The nonpartisan elections for the five town commissioners and the mayor are held on a two-year staggered schedule with three seats up for election in odd-numbered years. Each commissioner and the mayor serve four-year terms. Wake Forest commissioners are paid $515.85 each month, or $6,190 annually. Because there are no districts, the three candidates with the most votes are elected.
The election on Nov. 3 will be conducted by the Wake County Board of Elections. If you want to make sure you can vote in this important election for the town – all town elections are important – make sure you are registered to vote. The deadline for registering to vote in the Nov. 3 election is Oct. 9.
If you are not registered, there are supposed to be a number of ways and places to register to vote in North Carolina, but be warned that registering to vote in some places may mean your registration will be lost. A number of people have testified during the current federal court hearing about the 2013 voting changes law that their voter registrations were lost, making their 2014 vote invalid.
“Under federal law, all state offices where residents can sign up for welfare, food stamps, Medicaid, and other support services are also required to provide the opportunity to register to vote or update a registration. Since 1993, the law helped North Carolina increase its voter registrations of public assistance clients sixfold. But according to an investigation by Project Vote, the Southern Coalition for Social Justice, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, and Demos, North Carolina offices have been ‘systematically failing’ to comply in recent years,” a report in the online ThinkProgress said this week.
“In visits to 19 different public assistance offices in 11 different North Carolina counties, investigators with the voting rights groups found that government workers routinely failed to distribute voter registration applications or ask clients if they needed one. Multiple offices did not even have voter registration forms in the building. If the state does not respond to either this complaint or the one related to voter registration failures at the state’s DMV’s, the groups are prepared to sue. Both complaint waiting periods expire in August.”
You can be assured you are registered to vote if you visit the Wake County Board of Elections on Salisbury Street in Raleigh or go to www.wakegov.com, select “Board of Election” and follow the easy instructions to register on line. You can then return to the county site to check that your registration is listed. The Gazette editor checks her registration and the registrations of family members regularly.
