WILSON'S MILLS - One candidate here said a polling place foul-up could have cost him reelection. An error on the Board of Elections' Web site could have confused voters, said council incumbent Clifton Cooley Sr.

As of Monday, Cooley trailed former mayor Kenneth Jones by a vote in the race for the last of three open council seats. Cooley, who has served eight years on the council, could still win if six provisional ballots go his way, but he was already weighing other options last week.

The root of the issue was a change in the town's sole polling place. The Board of Elections announced in July that it would move the poll from the town's fire station to its elementary school, and sent postcards saying as much to each resident.

But the board updated only one of the two polling-place lists on its Web site; the two links sit next to each other on the site, and their content is almost identical. When The Herald printed a list of polling places in its Oct. 28 edition, it referred to the list that contained the errors.

Cooley thinks the county Web site spread bad information that could have cost him that crucial vote. "People got confused as to where to go to vote yesterday," Cooley said last week. "There was nobody at the fire station telling them where to go."

Some of his supporters didn't end up voting because of the mistake, Cooley said.

Leigh Anne Price, supervisor of elections in Johnston County, said about six people from Wilson's Mills called her with complaints or questions on election day. But despite the Web site error, she said, all the town's residents had received the notification cards.

Cooley said he planned to protest the election and request a re-vote. Price said that if Cooley could show an "irregularity" in the voting, he could ask for a hearing before the county's Board of Elections. That board could then choose to send the dispute to the state Board of Elections, which could, among other things, schedule a second vote.

Another curiosity in Wilson's Mills: More than 30 of 156 voters, or about 20 percent, wrote in a candidate instead of voting for Fleta Byrd or Phillip Wright for mayor.