Friday, November 5, 2004

County records 89% voter turnout

Voter registers and ballot counters hold up under Election Day frenzy


By MATT FURBER
Express Staff Writer

Chief Deputy Clerk Joanna Erhmantraut spent much of Wednesday filing Election Day voter registration information with the state. Photo by David N. Seelig

Poll workers endured long hours and long lines Tuesday managing a record voter turnout of 12,612 voters for the general election held in Blaine County.

At the American Legion Hall in Ketchum, one of 14 voting precincts in the county, voter register Jean Levy put in 15 hours helping voters check in and cast their votes.

?This year for a change there were a lot of new young people, who voted,? said Levy, who also worked during the Gore, Bush race in 2000. ?I was there a long time, but it was fun.?

Levy?s precinct registered 102 new voters on Election Day, said Blaine County Chief Deputy Clerk Joanna Ehrmantraut, who was entering information from the new registration cards for the state?s records Wednesday.

?We were wondering where they all came from,? Ehrmantraut said, remarking on the impressive voter turnout. ?We had close to 89 percent voter turnout. Typically at a presidential election we have had 79 percent.?

JoLynn Drage, deputy auditor for the county, said the absentee count took the longest to tally because a number of mailed absentee ballots were too crinkled to be run through the automated ballot counter.

?It could have gone faster, but we had a huge number of absentee voters,? Drage said Wednesday as she tried to catch up on her regular work after the substantial overtime it took to pull together the election results.

?This was the first time we were not able to count all the absentee ballots first,? said County Clerk Marsha Reimann, who after a late night managing the count, returned early Wednesday morning to help clean up the Grange Hall, which is used as one of four Hailey precincts. ?The (2,913) absentee votes included about 600 ballots that were mailed in. We had to open all those envelopes.?

Teddie Daley, who also worked with Levy at the American Legion Hall and delivered the ballot boxes to Hailey late Tuesday night, said part of the reason they worked so late is that it took a long time to account for all the ballots. In addition to the regular punch cards used at all the precincts, Ketchum also had to account for the paper ballots cast for the advisory vote on the YMCA proposal and the advisory vote on the Ketchum Cemetery District.

?I got back home about 11:30 p.m.,? Daley said.

Levy and Daley weren?t alone working long hours Tuesday. Each precinct had five or six volunteers, and precinct 14, which was located in the Hailey Elementary School gymnasium with two other precincts, had double the number of volunteers because of the large voter turnout in the precinct.

?Bellevue was the next largest? turnout, Ehrmantraut said, having checked on the precinct in the elementary school three times Tuesday. ?There were only six people working there. The last people were let in and they locked the door behind them. People were still voting after 9 p.m.?

Ketchum Treasurer and City Clerk Sandra Cady worked until after 2 a.m. Wednesday morning hand counting the YMCA ballots. Ketchum voters checked boxes in pencil for the two votes, which required the lengthy manual count.

Those waiting for results to be posted at the Old County Courthouse sat on pins and needles as ballot boxes and books trickled in from around the county.

?I want to thank our road and bridge crew for hauling the ballot boxes and the voting booths to the precincts,? Ehrmantraut said.

With 4,343 more ballots cast this year than during the 2000 presidential election, including 906 new registered voters, electorate registers and vote counters had their hands full.

?People thank us for volunteering, but you do get paid,? Levy said. ?Even if we didn?t, I would do it anyway. It?s a good thing and I think more people should do it. It was a good turnout.?




 Local Weather 
Search archives:


Copyright © 2024 Express Publishing Inc.   Terms of Use   Privacy Policy
All Rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part in any form or medium without express written permission of Express Publishing Inc. is prohibited. 

The Idaho Mountain Express is distributed free to residents and guests throughout the Sun Valley, Idaho resort area community. Subscribers to the Idaho Mountain Express will read these stories and others in this week's issue.