Record turnout for midterm election

By BRIAN WALKER

Staff Writer

COEUR d’ALENE — Those long wait times at some polls on Tuesday told a larger story.

A record percentage of votes were cast by Kootenai County voters for a midterm general election.

When Elections Manager Carrie Phillips finished adding in 6,117 Election Day voter registrations on Friday, the final voter turnout was determined to be 68 percent. A total 57,232 ballots were cast for the election.

That percentage shattered the previous midterm mark of 58 percent in 2010. It even rivaled those of the two most-recent presidential elections when 77 percent voted in 2016 and 76 percent in 2012.

Phillips said she believes multiple factors spurred on the heavy turnout.

"The propositions had a lot of activity, candidates campaigned harder and more went door to door," Phillips said.

Voters approved the proposition that expands Medicaid and shot down the one that authorized historical horse racing at certain locations where live or simulcast horse racing occurs.

Phillips also cited local and national media coverage on politics as another factor for the strong turnout.

Based on the high number of absentee and early votes cast, the Elections Office ordered about 7,000 extra ballots to gear up for Election Day.

Phillips said it turned out that those were not needed, but she's still glad that they were ordered.

"You know Murphy’s Law — if we didn’t order additional ballots we would have needed them," she said, adding no polls ran out of ballots.

Phillips thanked the entire elections team, including paid staff and volunteers.

"Overall things went well considering our record turnout for this midterm," she said. "We started planning for this election in late August and, at that point, we were not predicting a presidential turnout. You can imagine this makes it a challenge when recruiting extra workers and figuring out how many ballots to order."

Phillips said the county will look at changing some poll sites that had overcrowding issues.

"Our county is growing so much we will need to re-evaluate our registered voter numbers at each precinct," she said.