Turnout for Primary Down, New Photo ID Law Poses No Major Problems

Despite a heavy election-day turnout, the overall vote totals for this week’s Presidential Preference Primary and DeKalb Democratic Primary were well below the results for the same election in 2008.
“Turnout was down considerably in the national PPP and local Democratic Primary,” said Dennis Stanley Administrator of Elections. “I’ll leave it to political observers to analyze the numbers, but the fact the current president was running opposed coupled with the national media attention on the Republican side of the presidential race may have been factors in the low numbers,” Stanley said.
This election was also a little bit unusual compared to very recent elections in that the number of votes cast on election-day was just over two-thirds of the total number. “Recently, the trend has been that early votes equal a third to one-half the overall number. Some of that also depends on the type of election, the offices on the ballot and the time of the year in which the election is held,” Stanley added.
In 2008, 3,089 local voters cast ballots in the Democratic Presidential Primary and only 793 votes were cast locally this year. On the Republican side, the numbers were about the same. In 2008 1,349 votes were cast in the GOP Primary compared to 1,337 this year.
Meanwhile, the local administrator said there were no major problems relating to the state’s new Photo ID law. “We had one voter cast a provisional ballot because he did not have a
valid ID with him at the time he arrived at the polls,” Stanley explained. “In this circumstance, voters must come to the election office and show a valid ID within 2 days. This voter came back the very next morning and produced a valid ID and had no complaints about the process.”
“We only received reports of two other incidents relating to the photo ID law and each time the voter simply chose not to cast a provisional ballot and walked away,” he said. “The local election commission and the Secretary of State’s Office began spreading the word about the Photo ID law late last summer and early fall.
Based on what I’ve heard from around the state and what happened locally, it appears the effort to educate voters paid off,” Stanley concluded. “That effort will continue and as each subsequent election passes, the Photo ID law will become even less of a problem.”