JEFFERSON CO., Pa. (EYT) – Local election officials say Tuesday’s voter turnout was about average for a municipal election.
According to Karen Lupone, Director of Elections for Jefferson County, the voter turnout in Jefferson County was about average for a municipal election.
“Out of roughly 20,000 registered voters, about 8,200 people voted,” Lupone said.
While a turnout rate of around 41 percent may be average for a municipal election in the area, Lupone noted they always hope for more.
“I always like to see it higher, of course. It wasn’t a bad turnout, but it could have been better.”
Lupone also noted that despite a small, early hitch, everything went smoothly with Jefferson County’s new voting equipment.
“There are always some little issues,” she said. “We issued Sharpie markers to be used on the ballots, but they quickly found out that didn’t work, and put the Sharpies away and used regular black ink pens.”
According to Lupone, the machines wouldn’t accept some of the ballots that were marked with the Sharpie markers, and a few early voters had to redo their ballots after the discovery was made. However, once they switched to the regular ink pens, everything went fine.
“Nobody panicked over it. They just switched to the black ink pens and the rest of the day went smoothly.”
In neighboring Clarion County, Director of Elections Cindy Callahan said unofficial results show 8,960 ballots were cast in Clarion County on Tuesday, out of 22,987 registered voters.
While that means only about 38.9 percent of the registered voters in the county votes in this election, Callahan pulled up data from 2015 that showed it isn’t an unusual turnout rate.
At the time of the 2015 municipal election, there were 22,386 registered voters in Clarion County, and 8,793 of them voted, for an overall turnout rate of 39 percent.
“We had fewer registered voters then, and fewer people voting, but the turnout percentage was almost the same,” Callahan noted.
Callahan said in this year’s election, the turnout rates varied widely from precinct to precinct throughout Clarion County, with the lowest rates down around 20 percent, and the highest rates around 50 percent.
The highest turnouts were in Foxburg Borough, where 52 percent of the registered voters cast a ballot, and in Elk Township, where the turnout was 49 percent.
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