Fourth seat on Meeker school board still too close to call

MEEKER | Late night final vote counting at the county courthouse Tuesday left announcement of one of four winners of Meeker school board seats undecided, with 10-12 votes still out. Voters clearly returned incumbents Bud Ridings with 736 votes and Davey Smith with 730 votes to the board.
Challenger Laurie Whiteman Simonsen will be the newcomer on the board having garnered 623 votes.
As of press time, incumbent candidate Bill deVergie had a 7-vote lead with 561 votes over incumbent Todd Shults with 554 for the fourth available four-year term on the board. There are, according to County Clerk and Recorder Boots Campbell, between 10 and 12 votes still out: some requiring signature verification, and a few provisional and overseas ballots and five kept out for the sake of voter privacy to be counted with later ballots. If all those ballots are cast in favor of deVergie or Shults, it could change the final result. Campbell hopes to be able to certify the election results late in the day on Nov. 15.
Of 2,389 active voters in the Meeker district, 942 cast their ballots in this off-year election, a 36 percent voter turnout.