Ballots due by Aug. 15 in primaries for Mt. Pleasant mayor, Spring City council
John Hales
Staff writer
8/3/2017
MANTI—It will be a relatively quiet primary-election season this year in Sanpete County.
Only two cities are even holding primaries: Mt. Pleasant for mayor, and Spring City for city council.
Voters in both cities have about a week and a half to fill out and return mail-in ballots. Those ballots were mailed out on July 18, so voters should have them by now.
“If they don’t receive a ballot and they live in city limits, definitely call the clerk’s office and we’ll see what’s happening,” Sanpete County Clerk Sandy Neill said last week.
If returned by regular mail, ballots must be postmarked no later than Monday, Aug. 14. Neill said that if voters wait until that last minute to return by mail, they should verify the postmark.
“If it was me and it was the day before and I want to mail it, I would ask [a postal worker] to put a handstamp on it,” just to make sure it was done, Neill said.
If ballots are not put into the mail by the deadline, they may still be dropped off at the Sanpete County Courthouse in Manti the day of the election, Tuesday, Aug. 15, between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m.
If a voter in either city has not received a ballot, Neill encouraged them to call the clerk’s office to fix the problem. She said some ballots have been returned to office as “undeliverable,” which is usually due to people moving or having addresses on their voter registrations that do not match the addresses on file at the post office.
“If they have a phone number or an email address, we work really hard to get a hold of them,” Neill said. “We’re working hard to find out the problems.”
If a ballot has somehow been ruined or perhaps marked incorrectly, Neill said voters may call the clerk’s office to request a replacement. Ballots are marked with unique per-voter barcodes which are scanned as ballots come back, eliminating any chance of double-voting from duplicate ballots.
At this point, it appears that the campaigns in those elections are fairly quiet as well.
Many people the Messenger has spoken to have said that there aren’t any real “hot” issues driving the election in Spring City this year—despite the recent eruption over whether or not alcoholic beverages could be sold at the city park during the Spring City Bluegrass and Folk Festival.
That issue is unlikely to be much of a factor in the election. Rather, Spring City finds itself wrestling with how to pay for some important things in a small city that has a comparatively miniscule business sales-tax base.
In Spring City’s primary, five people are running for two city-council seats: Joseph Fuchas, Michael Black, Chris Anderson, Kimberly Lloyd-Stewart and Tom Brunner.
Four of those will advance out of the primary.
No one is opposing incumbent Mayor Jack Monnett in November’s general election.
In Mt. Pleasant, things might be a little livelier, though the political conversation seems to have been subdued somewhat to this point.
Mt. Pleasant is dealing with a host of infrastructure issues: water, power and airport development, among others.
After being appointed interim mayor earlier this summer, Sandra Bigler is running in the primary election as an incumbent. In the primary, voters will choose among Bigler, Dan Simons and Todd Horn.
There is no primary for city-council seats in Mt. Pleasant.
Even after the primary, someone could join any race for municipal office in any city by registering as an official write-in candidate until Sept. 8, and even people who lose in the primary election may still run as official write-ins if they so choose.
