Early voting setting records in county

COEUR d’ALENE — The hottest new place in town doesn’t have a cover charge, but its very existence cost many Americans the ultimate price. The Kootenai County Elections Department is seeing staggering early voter turnout this year, said deputy county clerk Jennifer Locke on Tuesday.

“Just like we are currently seeing across the country, we are seeing record numbers for absentee and early voting for a midterm election versus a presidential year election,” said Locke.

Typically voter turnout in presidential election years is far higher than in midterm election cycles. For example, in 2016 when the presidency was on the line, Kootenai County saw 87.25 percent of its registered voters, or 67,952 people, cast a ballot. In 2014 when the top items on the ticket were state and congressional offices, only 54.26 percent of registered voters, or 37,408 people, cast a ballot.

The numbers tell this year’s story. This month Kootenai County’s elections office has averaged 516 early voters per day, just shy of the 2016 average of 567 early voters per day, and far higher than the 2014 average of 197 early voters per day. Through six days, Kootenai County voters have cast 3,093 early votes as compared to 2,762 in the 14 days of early voting in 2014, and the 8,508 early votes cast over 15 days in 2016.

Elections manager Carrie Phillips said the county has mailed out far more absentee ballots this year than in other midterm elections. In 2014, 9,440 were mailed out. This year, that number has risen to 12,522, near the 2016 total of 13,565.

Phillips explained that the county orders a number of ballots consistent with past turnout rates. Part of the department’s job is “to make sure I don’t waste taxpayer dollars,” she said. The county has ordered ballots for 60 percent of all Kootenai County registered voters to be available on Election Day, way above the 52 percent of registered voters who cast a ballot in the 2014 midterm elections, she said.

Late last Friday and early on Monday, some Legislative District 4 voters were turned away at the county elections office due to the high turnout, explained Phillips. She said the county normally orders ballots for 20 percent of its registered voters to be mailed out and used in early voting. After mailing out 12,522 ballots, and with high turnout on the first two days of early voting, the county elections office ordered another 2,000 ballots early on the third day of early voting, said Locke. The initial batch of LD4 ballots lasted until 4:51 p.m. last Friday afternoon, after which two people were turned away, she said. One came back on Monday and voted, while another had a ballot mailed out to her, Phillips explained. Around 10:30 a.m. on Monday morning the new batch of 2,000 ballots had arrived for early voting purposes in LD4, said Locke.

Coeur d’Alene resident Michael Fields went to vote around that time on Monday morning, but was told that the office was out of ballots for Legislative District 4, and was asked to return a little later in the day when new ballots would be in. He did so and voted in the early afternoon, he said. “It definitely added a few hours to our day,” and made it more difficult because when he arrived earlier there were about five people in line, but when he returned later on there were about 50, he said.

In the event that a precinct gets low on ballots on Election Day, poll workers make copies of the ballots and when needed additional ballots will be delivered to the precinct, said Locke.

If Locke’s predictions are correct, it might be a reversal of trends in Idaho and Kootenai County during previous midterm election cycles. According to the statistics from the Idaho Secretary of State, the percentage of the voting age population that has actually cast a ballot in Idaho during midterm elections has shrunk from 44.08 percent in 2002 to 43.5 percent in 2006, 40.21 percent in 2010, and 37.59 percent in 2014.

That trend has also been borne out in the presidential year general election statistics. In 2004, 61.52 percent of Idaho’s voting age population cast a ballot. The percentage of the voting age population that voted shrank slightly to 61.13 percent in 2008, hit a low of 57.59 percent in 2012, and rose again slightly to 59.07 percent in 2016, still more than two percent below the 2004 voting rates. All this happened despite Idaho’s voting age population increasing more than 27 percent from 945,000 in 2002 to 1,203,384 in 2016.

Statistics for the voting age population at the county level are not available, but here in Kootenai County the percentage of registered voters that vote at election time has barely changed for the presidential years despite population growth. In real terms the number of ballots cast grew from 55,704 in 2004 to a high of 67,952 in 2016. However, turnout for registered voters has barely increased during presidential years from 86.84 percent in 2004 to 86.86 percent in 2008, to 87.33 percent in 2012, to 87.25 percent in 2016. That means despite the population growth of recent decades, only a slightly larger percentage of registered voters cast ballots.

Interestingly, during the midterms, the percentage of Kootenai County registered voters casting a ballot increased from 58.67 percent in 2002 and 58.08 percent in 2006 to 60.86 percent in 2010, but then dropped back to 54.26 percent in 2014. The total number of votes rose from 32,469 in 2002 to 37,973 in 2006, then peaked at 42,726 in 2010 and declined again in 2014 to 37,408.

Early voting ends on Friday at 5 p.m. After that, voters who haven’t yet cast a ballot may do so at their local polling stations on Election Day, said Phillips.