Voters in Carbon County came out in droves for the general election on Nov. 2 this year.
The turnout on election day was near 60 percent of the registered voters in the county. Altogether there were 8,532 ballots cast in Carbon County out of 14,646 registered voters.
Locally, incumbents managed to retain elected offices. Carbon County Commissioner Mike Milovich beat challenger Gerald Lloyd, with 4,951 voted to 3,171.
In the Utah House of Representatives race for a vacant District 67 seat, Democrat Walt Borla lost to Patrick Painter by a margin of 6,654 to 3389.
Democratic Utah Senator Mike Dmitrich retained the District 27 position by beating Republican Phillip Peay from Mapleton, 16,201 to 11,674
In the Second District congressional race, Jim Matheson was re-elected to United States House of Representatives by beating Republican John Swallow, 175,412 to 129,044.
In the United States Senate race, incumbent Republican Bob Bennett crushed Democrat Paul Van Dam’s candidacy with a 566,609 to 243,054 defeat.
Carbon County voters went for Bennett giving the incumbent 4,122 votes compared to Van Dam’s 3,761.
In the governor’s race, Republican Jon Huntsman won by a 75,560 to 359,738 margin over Scott Matheson Jr.
Carbon County went strongly for Matheson by giving the candidate 5,049 votes compared to Huntsman’s 3,172.
In Carbon County, 4,855 voters cast ballots in favor of amendment three, the so called marriage amendment, while 3,055 citizens opposed the proposal.
State and county voters also supported the passage of amendment one, which would give the Utah Legislature more power in the impeachment process with 4,762 ballots supporting passage and 2,686 voters opposing amendment one. It also passed statewide.
In addition, Utahns approved amendment two, but in Carbon County however, voters decided they didn’t like this amendment and voted no 3,908 times, while only 3,433 said yes.
Another measure on the ballot was Initiative 1. If passed that measure would have taken 1/20 of a cent of sales tax to apply to various clean air, clean water and open space projects across the state. However, most Utahns didn’t like it and Carbon voters also defeated it, voting 4,245 against and 3,341 for.
The Carbon County School Board also had some seats up for grabs in this election. Robert Barry Deeter ran unopposed and took in 867 votes to carry District 1 to take the seat Walt Borla abandoned to take up the challenge of running for the state house or representatives.
District 3 was the only seat on the school board that had two candidates contesting it. Incumbent Grady McEvoy won his seat back, beating Bruce M. Quinton 629 to 470.
Of course the headliner of the election was the presidential race. Nationally George Bush won reelection, and the same was true for Carbon County where he got 4,856 votes compared to John Kerry who received 3,378.
General election has heavy turnout in Carbon County
