Tuesday’s primary turnout highest in 20 years

Indianapolis Star 

May 8, 2008

Tuesday's primary turnout highest in 20 years
By John Strauss

If Tuesday seemed like a busy day at your local polling place, there’s a reason:

Just over 39 percent of Indiana’s registered voters cast ballots in the presidential primaries on Tuesday – nearly double the turnout of recent comparable elections.

The turnout was the highest since the 1988 primary election, when 42 percent of Hoosiers voted in that year's primaries.

Unofficial tallies showed 1,686,933 ballots cast for Hillary Rodham Clinton, Barack Obama and the four Republican presidential candidates on Indiana’s ballot.

The Indiana secretary of state’s office says 4,318,977 people were registered to vote, indicating a turnout substantially above that of recent presidential primary years.

Tuesday’s 39 percent was nearly double the 2000 figure of 20 percent. In 2004, the turnout statewide was 21 percent.

Unlike any previous year since 1968, a major party nomination remained undecided as Hoosiers headed for the polls this year.

Election officials said voter registrations and absentee voting were both up substantially in the weeks before the election, and that those increases likely signaled a very busy day at the polls.

For the most part, it appeared, the voting went smoothly.

A state hotline set up to record election day complaints received 1,368 calls from the public, but most were routine questions about registration and where to vote, Secretary of State Todd Rokita said Wednesday.

The secretary of state’s office got nine calls regarding poll worker conduct – including one complaint that a poll inspector left the voting location to “make sure her kids got on the bus,” Rokita’s office said.

An hours-long delay of results from Lake County, meanwhile, occurred because officials there failed to follow “the best practice” for counting absentee votes, the state report said.

Most large counties – Marion County included – tabulate absentee ballots at the precincts in order to take advantage of the large supply of poll workers already in place.

“Lake County chose to count their absentee ballots at a centralized location on Election Day rather than going by the best practice in counties with large populations,” the report said.

“Final Lake County election results were not posted by the county until after 5 a.m. this morning.”

Those results from one of the state's largest counties delayed the tabulation of close races for the party nominations for governor and president.