Tepid Voter Turnout Seen in State College Area

UPDATED @ 3 a.m. May 18: According to preliminary Centre County data, voter turnout in the county Tuesday was about 23.2 percent.

The initial data show 19,253 people countywide voted Tuesday. Just more than 83,000 Centre Countians — registered Democrats and Republicans — were eligible to vote this week.

Turnout for the last municipal primary, in 2009, was 16.43 percent, according to the county. For the municipal primary in 2007, it was 29.53 percent. And for the municipal primary in 2005, it was 19.51 percent.

Earlier coverage is posted below.

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Earlier report, posted @ 5:32 p.m. Tuesday:

Centre County voter turnout has been sluggish for much of Tuesday, a number of polling-place observers said.

With no high-profile federal or state offices in play this year, they said, most voters seem to be sitting on the sidelines for the spring primary contests.

‘Probably the rain has something to do with it,’ said Peggy Brown, elections judge at the State College Municipal Building polling place. ‘But as one of the voters said: ‘Do you stop eating when it starts raining?”

At Brown’s polling place, where nearly 1,800 people are registered to vote, just 22 had turned out to cast ballots by 3:10 p.m. She said it was the lightest turnout she has seen in the three years she has worked elections.

A lot of Penn State students are registered to vote in her precinct — State College East Central No. 2. But with spring-semester classes having ended, many students have already cleared out of town for the summer.

Down on Easterly Parkway, in the polling place at the State College Chinese Alliance Church, 115 of roughly 1,000 registered voters had turned out as of 3:25 p.m., precinct elections judge Jeff Kern said. He said Democrats and Republicans were turning out at near-equal rates.

‘This is the worst (turnout) I’ve ever seen,’ said Kern, who has worked at the polls for roughly 15 years.

From a technical standpoint, voting operations in the county saw some minor problems at a handful of precincts Tuesday. At Kern’s precinct, he said, pre-printed technical markings on some ballots appeared to have been misprinted, preventing a handful of ballots from being accepted normally by a digital scanner there.

Poll workers caught the problem and lost no votes in the process, Kern said. The problem was fully corrected by mid-afternoon.

Joyce McKinley, director for the county Office of Elections, affirmed that some local polling places saw ballot-scanning issues Tuesday. She said the difficulty was reported statewide.

‘What the issues are — we don’t know,’ McKinley said. But she emphasized that ‘everybody will be counted tonight.’

Polling places, which opened at 7 a.m. Tuesday for Primary Election Day, will close at 8 p.m. StateCollege.com will provide election updates on this website and via Twitter at @SCNewsDesk.

Related coverage

• Centre Co. Polls Open until 8 p.m.; Several Polling Changes Announced (May 17, 2011)

• StateCollege.com’s politics page