Trending
Until the polls close at the end of the day of voting, there is never a definitive answer of how turnout was, but, according to Forrest Lehman, based on anecdotal indicators, voting was "steady, bordering on busy" for the midterm election.
"What we gauge turnout on anecdotally during the day is call volume," Lehman said.
"What poll workers might say to us, what we might happen to see outside a precinct, based on just the purely
anecdotal indicators, it seems like turnout is steady, bordering on busy here and there, at some times during the day. So it seems to be going very, very well so far," Lehman said in the early afternoon.
He noted that there didn't seem to be any unusual difficulties being reported from the precincts. "Nothing out of the ordinary. Any election that we have is 80 precincts, 500 poll workers, tens of thousands of voters, and we're all thrown together for 13 hours. And it is inevitable that when you have that many moving parts, there are going to be some cases where there are some things that you have to manage. You know, you have a few issues with scanners, or you have some policy questions from poll workers about how to handle a voter. People don't know where to go to vote. All of that is inevitable," he explained.
"They are completely standard occurrences in an election. So everything we're experiencing today in terms of call volume or little issues here and there is completely normal for a busy election," he added.
In the run up to the election, Lehman said it is not uncommon for his office to field questions about where to vote from people who may not have voted for a while and in the interim polling sites have changed.
"It's very common for people to contact us in the run up to an election to confirm that they're registered, make sure they know where they're supposed to go to vote in case their polling place changed, and so yes, we feel many calls like that in the run up to the election, as well as on election day," he said.
"Many of the calls we're getting from precincts during the day are to look up voters if poll workers aren't seeing them in the poll book. Because if people aren't voting all the time, we did change a lot of polling places over the last few years for accessibility. We've always had some parts of the county where you have municipalities divided into multiple precincts and polling places, and that can always lead to somebody going into the wrong place. So we can look them up; we can find out where they're supposed to be; and we get them pointed in the right direction.
In terms of when the results from the election will be posted, Lehman pointed out that his office is not permitted to disclose any results until after the polls close at 8 p.m.
"People can expect results to start appearing on the county website at some point after precincts start returning to us, because the precincts have to close down their operation. They have to come back and bring us back their results, their equipment, their supplies, their ballots, everything. And once that starts happening, that's when we'll be able to post results," he said.
"Typically, results begin appearing around 8:45 to 9 o'clock. And again, typically our operation is concluded around 10:30 to 11 o'clock, and so during the course of those 90 minutes or so, all our precincts will return to us. We'll gradually update those totals with our mail ballots and the 80 precincts reporting in until we have everything up on the board that we can for the night," Lehman said.
Contrary to what some from other states are posting on social media, Lehman said that his office has not heard of any difficulties with outside interference at the state's election sites.
"There are always rumors that people will express various concerns on social media or on the phone about what if this happens, what if that happens and yes some of our job does entail planning for contingencies. We have to think about what are things that could happen-what are we going to do about that," he said.
"But you know...we hadn't heard anything credible about there being federal agents at polling places or anything like that," he added.
Lehman wanted to remind everyone who might read it on social media before the polls closed, to get out and vote.
"They should be sure to figure out where they need to go vote and get there before 8 o'clock so that they can be a part of the process. You know we're having a busy day, but let's keep it a busy day all the way to the end," he said.