Steady Coventry Voting Elected New Councilors Nov. 5

COVENTRY, RI — Polling places reported steady Coventry voting through election day Nov. 5, as the RI Board of Elections reported about 30 percent of registered voters had already turned out to add three new city councillors, and formally elect one.

RIDOT Associate Director JP Verducci and Hopkins Hill Fire Chief Frank Brown will take the two new at-large Town Council seats. Voters also favored Council-appointed incumbent Alicia Capaldi for her first elected term and Republican Scott Copley  for the Dist. 2 and Dist. 5 races, respectively.

Polling anecdotes: Coventry voting

At about 2 p.m.at Hopkins Hill School, Mary Cline stood by herself greeting voters from the prescribed distance from the polls, holding a sign for JP Vercucci. She’d been greeting voters all day, and said that the morning hours brought a brief rush of voters there.

“I’d say about 10 at a time,” Cline said of the morning traffic of voters. The voting had slowed between noon and 1 p.m., she said, and some people reported about 450 people had voted that morning.

Inside, Meaghan Smith, moderator for the polling place, said about 600 people had voted there by 2 p.m.

“It’s the same as its been any other election,” said Meg Kelleher, polling clerk.

At the Coventry Town Hall Annex across the street from Town Hall on Flat River Road, Town Council Dist. 2 candidate Cheryl Kane was greeting passersby as she held her own signs, said the polling place was among the busiest in the town that day.

“Today’s been a very steady day,” said Bill Marcotte, Board of Canvassers Chairman, inside the building. He said that by 2 p.m. that day, about 14,826 of the town’s 26,000 registered voters had shown up at polling places across the town.

At that time, about 389 people had been in to vote at the Annex.