While voters were busy watching the Federal Election results late into the evening on Tuesday night, there were also several close races in Carbon County that kept voters on the edge of their seats.

“You know overall I think we had a great turnout,” said Carbon County Clerk, Seth Oveson. “We ended up with voter turnout in Carbon County of about 70 percent, which is better than we have had in several years. I was very impressed everybody came out, people were courteous at the polls.” There were no problems here like what Salt Lake and St. George faced with voters waiting to place their ballots.

Early voting for all district began on October 25 and ran through till November 4. “Just over 3000 people early voted which was just about 30 percent of the county chose to vote that way and avoided the lines completely. That is the most early voting that we have had since I have been the county clerk,” said Oveson. The polls brought out a lot of younger voters as well as those who had a voter history of either never going to the polls or not within the last 15 years.

One of the closer races that Carbon County voters were watching was for House Seat 69. In Carbon County Brad King had 58.9 percent of the vote and Christine Watkins had 41 percent of the vote. But that’s a House District that covers part of Emery County, Grand County and Duchesne County. “When you add in the votes from Duchesne it shows that Christine Watkins is actually winning by just under 400 votes right now,” reported Oveson. This does not include any of the provisional ballots or ballots that were mailed before the deadline that haven’t made it through the mail yet.

The Carbon County Commissioner race was a real nail biter. Oveson explained, “That one was a lot closer when we first started reporting numbers. That’s the one that one was winning, then it went back and forth. But right now with all the Early Voting, Election Day Voting and the By Mails that we’ve got in – its got Casey Hopes is winning by just about 200 votes. We still have about 300 – 340 votes outstanding which we will be counting in the next week or so.” The County Clerk’s office will report more numbers on Tuesday, November 15 and final numbers canvas on November 22 so that things can be verified and are correct.

To see county election results, visit the Carbon County website or go to vote.utah.gov to see the federal and state results.