Early voting in school election light

Copyright © 2009
Gallup Independent
By Bill Donovan
Staff writer

GALLUP — As expected, early voting in the upcoming school board election has been slow.

As of Wednesday morning, the county election office had received only 108 absentee ballots and only 97 ballots. Early voting will continue until 5 p.m. Friday, and the election office will continue to accept absentee ballots until 7 p.m. Tuesday, the day of the election.

County Election Director Rick Palochak has been saying from the start of the voting that he expected a low turnout because only one of the three seats up for grabs this election have opposition. That’s District 5, which is within the boundaries of Gallup and has four candidates running for office — incumbent Bruce Tempest, Timothy G. Nelson, Mark S. Elliott and John W. Lomasney.

All of the precincts in the county will be open on election day since there is also a countywide bond proposal to allow the University of New Mexico-Gallup campus to take out another $8 million in bonds to make capital improvements on the campus.

Also running for the school board but without any opposition are Chee Smith Jr., who is running for Johnny R. Thompson’s position and Joseph C. Meniui, who is running for Joe DeLaO’s position. The other positions on the ballot are also unopposed.

Running for the Zuni School Board are Virginia R. Chavez for Position 3 and Carmelita A. Sanchez for Position 5. Running for the UNM-G advisory board are Gloria Mae Skeet for Position 2, this is countywide excluding the Zuni District, and June Shack for Position 3, which is only for the Zuni District.