Unlike four years ago when states jockeyed to be among the first to cast ballots in the hotly contested 2008 presidential primary season and 24 states and America Soma held their contests on February 5, this year only 10 states held contests on “Super Tuesday.” And with no contest on the Democrat side and less interest on the Republican side than there seemed to be four years, that made for a slow Super Tuesday for many elections officials with light turnout reported from Alaska to Vermont. That being said, just because the day was relatively quiet, some would say slow, doesn’t mean it was uneventful. The following is a brief recap of some of the events of Super Tuesday. In Franklin County, Ohio, some voters left their polling places without voting after confusion about ballots lead to delays. The confusion arose in polling places that handle multiple precincts. Due to the confusion about which ballots voters were supposed to receive, some voters could not wait because they had to get to work. Poll workers took down the contact information of the voters who had to leave and reached out to them after the ballot confusion was cleared up to encourage them to return to vote.
Franklin County wasn’t alone with ballot problems. In Lucas County, Ohio about 50 voters used incorrect ballots after a poll worker was confused about which voters got which ballots in a multi-precinct polling place. In Clermont County, Ohio and Muscogee County, Ga., it wasn’t a glitch with voting that caused problems, it was computer problems that caused issues with the counting process and held up the results in both counties. Elections offices in Dougherty County, Ga. also reported technical problems during the counting process.
For Trumbull County, Ohio officials, election night lasted a little longer than expected because workers forgot to bring back voting machines from one polling places and because officials had to count the paper ballots cast by 17-year-olds voting for the first time.
Although polling places in Monroe County, Tenn. weren’t directly affected by last week’s devastating tornadoes, turnout on Tuesday was definitely affected with only about 350 voters casting ballots in a precinct that usually sees 1,000 voters. “Throughout the county with the vote being down anyway, people have to take care of their homes,” Precinct official Tara Harrill told a local television affiliate.
Full Article: electionlineWeekly.