Although the results for the highly anticipated governor’s election are still undetermined as of late Tuesday night, Daviess County had a record number of voters who participated with a reported 45 percent turnout.
“Today was historic turnout,” Daviess County Clerk Leslie McCarty said of Tuesday’s election. “This has been the largest turnout for a governor’s race I think in Daviess County.”
McCarty said rather than the predicted 35 percent of voters she and Deputy Clerk Richard House expected to see, 45.23 percent of registered voters showed up to the polls on Tuesday.
Voter turnout for gubernatorial elections typically falls around 30-35 percent in Daviess County.
“It’s so crazy because, typically, the governor’s race has a pretty low turnout, so we didn’t have many ballots,” she said. “We ended up printing a lot of ballots, we encouraged people to use the eSlate machine.”
The Clerk’s office recorded over 35,000 voters who came out to the polls on Tuesday, McCarty said.
“That’s so crazy to me — I cannot believe we had that,” she said.
Some local precincts were calling the clerk’s office with reports that they were out of ballots during Tuesday’s election, and the County Clerk’s office started printing more ballots at 11 a.m.
“Precinct after precinct called that they were out of ballots,” she said. “That was kind of a trend across the state. I talked with several county clerks across the state who did not order as many ballots. I don’t think they were expecting such a huge turnout.”
For her first governor’s election as County Clerk, McCarty said she was pleased with the day and the consolidation of voting precincts, but most of all the turnout.
“Today beat all my expectations,” she said. “People were very passionate about the governor’s race.”
