electionline Weekly

In Focus This Week

News Analysis: Final ‘super Tuesday’ before Election Day
Seven states and District of Columbia hold primaries

By M. Mindy Moretti
Electionline.org

Seven states and the District of Columbia finally held their non-presidential party primaries this week to varying degrees of success and turnout.

New York conducted its first mostly Help America Vote Act-compliant primary this week and in some counties, very few people chose to use the new accessible voting machines. In Rensselaer County, only 10 people used the accessible machines, two of whom had disabilities of some sort.

Those who did, reported problems using the $11,500 machines, including some not being powered up in the polling stations when voters arrived.

The light turnout (less than 15 percent) didn’t exactly mean smooth sailing with the state’s old lever-machine system either. In Broome County, initial results were improperly reported after the printout from the lever machines could not be read. And some voters in Clinton County were confused about the location of their polling place after several were combined for the primary.

New York’s presidential preference primary was held February 5 with just under 20 percent turnout.

A day after Vermont elections officials made a public plea to voters not to write-in joke candidates things went relatively smoothly on primary day Vermont.

The clerks made their unusual plea in an effort to save time and money.

“Almost every election, there’s people who, I guess, think its fun to throw their vote away, basically,” Manchester Town Clerk Linda Spence told a local television station. “And while it may be worth a few giggles while you’re behind the curtain, it’s actually costing you tax dollars.”

Vermont held its presidential preference primary on March 4 with a nearly 40 percent voter turnout and although final numbers weren’t in yet, Secretary of State Deb Markowitz  (D) predicted turnout would be less than 10 percent, which would be a record low for Vermont.

New Hampshire which is the first state in the country to conduct a presidential primary (55 percent turnout), finally conducted its state primary this week that saw around a 15 percent turnout — partly hampered by foul weather.

Delaware was The First State in nickname only when it came to elections. It was one of the last to conduct a primary this week and had among the best turnout with approximately 22 percent making the trip to the polls for the closed primary. Although some late summer storms knocked out power to areas of the state, most polling places functioned on battery power and with few problems.

Delaware held its primary on Super Duper Tuesday, February 5, and saw an almost 24 percent turnout.

In Rhode Island, where only 7 percent of the electorate turned out to cast a ballot, there were a few reported problems including a memory pack that was temporarily lost and another was locked in a school polling place Tuesday night.  The Board of Canvassers said that the election results were not affected.

The Rhode Island presidential preference primary was held March 4th with an almost 29 percent turnout.

In the District of Columbia, although turnout was light throughout the day (just under 13 percent), the problems began after the polls closed.

Initial reports out of the Board of Ethics and Elections (BOEE) indicated that more Republicans has cast ballots than are actually registered — including more than 1,500 write-in ballots. Late Wednesday, BOEE blamed the problems on a defective computer memory cartridge in one optical-scan machine.

According to The Washington Post, the episode has sparked uncertainty over whether the board, after apparently botching a routine local primary with light turnout, can handle the general election in November.

The BOEE has seen a high turnover rate at the top recently and Council Chair Vincent Gray has promised that there will be a review before the November election.

“When you’re conducting an election like this, everything has to go perfectly, and this one did not,” Gray told The Washington Post. “The council has an obligation to find out why and introduce the fixes.”

Although who conducts that review remains in question as long-time D.C. Councilwoman Carol Schwartz who heads the committee that oversees the BOEE was defeated in one of the races that had questionable results.

The District held its presidential preference primary in February 12 with a 28.5 percent voter turnout.

Wisconsin officials used the Tuesday primary as an opportunity to register voters in advance of the November 4 election.

“Since Wisconsin is a state where you can register on site at the election polls, we wanted to encourage them to do it earlier to avoid long lines, and waiting and errors,” Cathy Arney, a Ward Inspector told a local television station as she waited for voters to show up at the polls.

In some Wisconsin counties, voter turnout, which was 36.5 percent for the February 19 presidential preference primary was in the single digits.  By the time polls closed in Dane County—the most populous county in the state, only 6.2 percent of the voting population had turned out.

“Primaries are not usually big, but this is smallest September I’ve seen in a long, long time,” said Dane County Clerk Bob Ohlsen told WISCTV. “There are really very few places that have any competition at all, so many of the ballots in Madison were just single names. So, people tend to not go out for that kind of election.”

In Minnesota, which conducted its presidential caucus on February 5 turnout for the statewide primary was light on Tuesday. In addition to a host of local races, the primary also featured Republican and Democratic primaries for one senate seat and eight seats in the House.

A primary race for a state Supreme Court seat has triggered Minnesota’s first statewide recount since 1962.

Two candidates seeking to challenge sitting Justice Lorie Gildea were separated by less than one half of 1 percentage point. It could require the manual review of more than 400,000 ballots, said John Aiken, a spokesman for the Secretary of State.

The recount is set to begin next week after the state canvassing board meets and must be complete by early October in time for absentee ballots to be mailed.

And finally, it was most likely the first and certainly the last election for a red squirrel in Olmstead County, Minn. this week. According to the Post Bulletin, the squirrel got into an electrical transformer outside the Quincy Township Hall.

The short cut off power to the hall for about 90 minutes, but did not disrupt voting because the machines can run on batteries. It happened at about 4:30 p.m. “We were just sitting there talking and we heard a ‘pop,'” said Monica Thompson, an election judge. “It sounded like a car backfiring at first.” “We thought: ‘terrorists,'” said Patty Fritz, another one of the judges.  Despite the outage, voting remained at the regular pace of about one voter every 20 minutes, Thompson said.

This does not mark the end of the 2008 primary season however. Hawaii and Massachusetts are still scheduled to conduct their primaries within the next two weeks. And Louisiana will hold its Gustav-interrupted primary on October 4.