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March 4, 2008

Primary turnout update: Unusually strong, fairly smooth

Projo.com is keeping tabs on turnout at primary polls around the state today. Here are reports so far:

CRANSTON -- Officials said voting appeared to be smooth early in the day. But there were some complaints.

The city reduced polling stations to 10 this year, down from 20 in the 2004 presidential primary. And Robert Giardina, a 59-year-old priest, said he was frustrated to learn that he could not vote his normal polling station at Budlong Manor, a retirement home.

“I went up there this morning and the sign said go to City Hall,” he said, adding later, “I wasn’t happy about it.”

NORTH KINGSTOWN -- At the Davisville Middle School polling place, where a large portion of voters from the northern section of town cast ballots, more than a thousand voters had turned out by late afternoon.

In addition to veteran voters, conversations in line revealed first-timers who came to take part in the presidential preference primary. Also, the disaffiliation table -- where voters could change their party affiliations after their vote today -- was busy at the DMS site.

-- projo.com staffer Pam Cotter

CUMBERLAND -- At the St. Joseph’s Parish Center, the lines were longer than previous primaries even thought the site had received double the number of voting booths than in previous years.

Moderator Charles Alves said people had been waiting in line 10 minutes before polls opened at 7 a.m. “We’ve been moving them right along with no holdups,” he said.

There were 450 votes cast at the polling site as of 1:15 p.m, a number that would have taken the entire day at that site during previous primaries, according to John Koniezny, of the town Board of Canvassers.

Koniezny said the large turnout could be attributed to the fact that this year the church community center was the site for two polling places.

-- Journal staff writer Philip Marcelo

FOSTER -- At the Moosup Valley Fire Station, the town’s lone polling site, Board of Canvasser’s Chair Natalie Arnold said that 449 voters had cast ballots as of 2:55 p.m, a “much higher number” than the last primary election.

Voters had been “dribbling in all day,” said Arnold, but if past years were any indication, she said the biggest crowds would come after work, beginning at about 4 p.m. and lasting until the polls closed. During the last presidential primary, 137 voters out of 2, 795 registered voters had cast ballots.

-- Journal staff writer Philip Marcelo

GLOCESTER -- Town Clerk and Board of Canvassers Clerk Jean M. Fecteau said the town's single poll at Town Hall saw 960 voters cast ballots as of 3 p.m., a number that tripled the total amount from the previous presidential primary, she said.

During the last presidential primary, 245 voters out of 6,070 registered voters had cast ballots. This year’s surprisingly large turnout has meant longer than normal lines at cast a vote, but the crowds have remained patient, she said. “The people have been pleasant and nice.”

-- Journal staff writer Philip Marcelo

JOHNSTON -- The ebb and flow of voting left the parking lot of the Ferri Middle School near full capacity through the mid-day hours.

Mayor Joseph M. Polisena, a stalwart of the Clinton campaign, hung around outside, talking to people and campaigning.

He wasn’t the only mayor in the parking lot: Joseph Curtatone, mayor of Somerville, Mass., had joined Polisena for his rounds. The two mayors said they met each other while campaigning for Clinton over the weekend. They planned to campaign together this afternoon and through the evening.

Clinton visited Johnston late last month, and Polisena has forecast an overwhelming victory for her in town.

As of this afternoon, the Board of Canvassers’ clerk, Laurie aRusso, didn’t have any numbers on turnout, but she suspected it was unusually high.

Through the day, the canvassers office fielded a steady stream of inquiries from people who want to know where to vote. That’s unusual during a presidential primary, aRusso said.

aRusso acknowledged one problem with a voting machine in the gymnasium of Ferri Middle School, the busiest of Johnston’s polling places yesterday.

The machine in question takes each paper ballot and scans the necessary information off it. Earlier in the day, the scanner on the machine had jammed.

The machine has an emergency chute that receives any ballots that do not feed into the scanner during a jam, aRusso said. Each of those ballots would be scanned and counted, she said.

As it turned out, the jam was fixed and a new machine was brought in as a backup in the event of any additional trouble, aRusso said.

-- Journal staff writer Mark Reynolds

BURRILLVILLE -- Town Clerk Louise Phaneuf noticed the arrival of professional exit polling companies. One of the companies was working for CNN, she said.

“That’s so unusual up here,” Phaneuf said.

“It’s nice to see an exciting election,” she added.

At that point, around 3 p.m., about 1,000 residents had voted at four different polling places, Phaneuf said.

In the 2004 presidential preference primaries, she said, canvassers tallied 401 votes from Democrats and 21 votes from Republicans.

-- Journal staff writer Mark Reynolds

PAWTUCKET -- Turnout was heavy in here, where the local Board of Canvassers opened half of the city’s usual 34 polling places, never anticipating that the Democratic primary would be such a hot race.

“I think we could have opened more (polling places) – maybe not all of them,” City Registrar of Voters Kenneth R. McGill said when asked whether he regretted the decision.

“Then again, who knew we were going to be in the mix? We thought it would all be over by Super Tuesday,” McGill said.

Instead, the Democratic primary in a city of 73,000 that used to be solidy pro-Hillary Clinton has has become part a possible make-or-break contest between Barack Obama and Clinton.

McGill predicted that 30 to 35 percent of the city’s voters would cast ballots, compared to the 9 percent who came to the polls in the primary in 2004.

At St. Teresa’s, a Catholic Church on Newport Avenue where three polling places were consolidated, lines got so long that the poll warden juggled letters of the alphabet, shuffling voters whose names began with common letters like “W” over to lines reserved for those whose names began with less common letters like “X, Y or Z.”

With consolidation, 5,000 people were eligible to vote at St. Teresa’s. By noon, about 700 people had cast ballots. Poll warden Pete Mecchi predicted the number would double: “I would say we’ll probably do at least 1,500,” he said.

-- Journal staff writer John Castellucci

RICHMOND -- About 25 voters were lined up outside at the town's single polling place before its doors opened at 9 a.m. And they've been arriving in a steady stream ever since, Town Clerk Mary Morgan said shortly after 11:30 this morning.

By that time, about 320 people had already cast their vote at the H.L. Arnold Fire Station on Richmond Townhouse Road. That's a rate of more than 100 per hour, Morgan noted. In previous presidential primaries, the total for the day might hit 400.

"It's really unbelievable," she said.

The lines were relatively long at the poll in the semi-rural town, with about a half-dozen or so people waiting to be checked in before the two registrars, who had split their lists in half alphabetically.

Once through that process, they moved to one of 10 voting stations, where they quickly filled out their short ballots.

The only problem that Morgan had seen so far is that some voters had overlooked instructions on the ballot and picked more delegates than allowed. The single voting scanner then spit back their ballot, and they had to start again.

Asked what she thought of the strong turnout, Morgan, a longtime town official, said diplomatically, "I think it's very interesting." Then, she added, "That's good. It shows you people are listening."

-- projo.com staff

EAST PROVIDENCE -- Voters at Rumford Towers on Newman Avenue in East Providence had to deal with a lack of parking this morning, and, in some cases, a long wait if their last name began with letters that seemed to draw more voters.

While some lines, such as that for last names beginning with A or B, were often empty, others, such as the line for C, D or E were long and sometimes out the door, with a wait of about 30 minutes.

An election worker, asked about the situation, said the letters were divided so that each line would have about the same number of voters. Since there was only one book with names and addresses for each line, there was no way that poll workers at the slow lines could help workers at the busy lines, she said.

PORTSMOUTH -- At Portsmouth Town Hall, 1,284 people had voted by 11 a.m., which is already more than the total number that had voted in the 2004 primary, according to Nancy Peveler, executive assistant to the board of canvassers.

At the Ferri Middle School in Johnston, the entire voting process took about 23 minutes late this morning.

The polling place has just one scanner and a long line formed at the scanner as voters waited to turn in their ballots.

-- With reports from Journal staff writers John Castellucci, Gregory Smith, Meaghan Wims, Arline Fleming, Randal Edgar, Gina Macris, and Paul Edward Parker, and projo.com staff writer Brandie M. Jefferson

Click below for more reports ...

Posted by Peter Phipps  at 6:30 PM | Permalink

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JW | March 4, 2008 12:47 PM link

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