Rules and regulations for then upcoming Berlin Municipal Election were laid out last week during a Board of Supervisors of Elections meeting.
Prior to this week’s meeting, members of the Berlin Mayor and Council are pictured in a show of support for the re-election bid of Councilmember Shaneka Nichols, who is seeking a second term on Oct. 1.
Submitted photo
By Tara Fischer, Staff Writer
Rules and regulations were laid out last week as the Berlin Municipal Election is officially underway.
While the election is mostly uncontested, except for the match-up between incumbent Shaneka Nichols and challenger Daniel Packey for the District 3 seat, the town’s Board of Supervisors of Elections met on Thursday, Sept. 5, to certify the candidates for the Oct. 1 race.
Current Berlin Mayor Zack Tyndall, District 2 Councilmember Jack Orris, and Nichols were declared eligible to defend their role, while Packey may compete to take the District 3 post from Nichols.
Write-in contenders may still file until 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 24. However, their names will not appear on the ballots. Granted that no one registers by the deadline, Mayor Zack Tyndall and District 2 Councilmember Jack Orris will hold on to their positions for another four years.
At the Sept. 5 Board of Supervisors of Elections meeting, Town Administrator Mary Bohlen emphasized that absentee ballots, or mail-in voters who cannot physically visit the polls, must submit an application and identify themselves in the correct district to be eligible.
Once the proper forms are certified by appointed town staff, the ballot will be mailed to the applicant. Interested residents can submit their application paperwork by mail by 4 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 24, or in person at Town Hall on 10 William Street by 4 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 27.
For those casting their votes in person on October 1, the polling location, St. Paul United Methodist Church at 405 Flower Street, will open at 7 a.m. The booths will close when the last person who joined the line before 7 p.m. has made their selection. The election group will return to Town Hall at the day’s conclusion to tally the tickets.
Bohlen also reminded the board that no campaigning is allowed past a certain point at the polling place. Signs will be present to identify the cutoff point.
“You cannot have election information in so many feet of the facility,” she said. “…In a relatively small and mostly uncontested election like this, you do not tend to see much of that campaign paraphernalia anyway…Candidates can’t stand outside the door and say, ‘Vote for me.’ The election board has the authority to stop that.”
The Board of Supervisors of Elections is scheduled to meet again on Tuesday, Sept. 24, at 5:30 p.m. The town’s Facebook page will stream a video of the gathering.
In election news, Mayor Tyndall announced his support for Nichols, who was also supported by her current colleagues on the council.
In a Facebook post, which included a picture of the full council supporting Nichols, “Councilmember Nichols and I are both lifelong residents of the Town of Berlin. We both grew up here and have chosen to raise our families here. Both of our families have called Berlin home for generations. Over the past four years, I have had the honor of working with Councilmember Nichols on issues affecting the entire Town of Berlin. Her advocacy for our community as a whole has allowed us to advance initiatives including one of the projects we are most proud of, the Berlin Community Center on Flower Street.”