City clerk: E.L. had 65 percent voter turnout

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Students who were gathered at the polls by 7 a.m. on Election Day had taken East Lansing City Clerk Nicole Evans’ advice: Get to the polls early to avoid the peak hours.

“Students heard the call about off-peak hours being at 7 a.m. — so they all showed up at 7 a.m. and created a new peak time,” she said, laughing.

These students were part of the 23,859 registered East Lansing voters who voted in the presidential election Tuesday, a 29.8 percent increase from 2004.

“The turnout for East Lansing was 65 percent (of registered voters), and the turnout in 2004 was 63 percent — it doesn’t look like a record turnout; however, you have to compare the number of registered population in 2004 and in 2008,” Evans said.

There were 18,376 registered voters in East Lansing in 2004.

East Lansing resident Dave Guerra said although the weather was great, the turnout number was more a result of the candidates.

“It was the candidates for sure,” Spanish education senior Caitlin Bahra said. “People were ready for a change after the past few years, and (Barack) Obama focused his message on young people more than anyone else has.”

However, the record number of voters did not come without problems at the polls.

“Every election, regardless of its size, has its own unique glitches, and this election was no exception,” Ingham County Clerk Mike Byranton said.

Out of the 131 precincts in Ingham County, four precincts had problems transferring their results electronically from the precinct to the county, he said. The ballots are tabulated at the precinct level, and the data is put onto memory packs, he said. The memory packs in these precincts weren’t reading, and people had to bring the information to the Ingham County Clerk’s Office to be put electronically onto the Web site, Byranton said.

East Lansing also had other delays with the processing of some of the ballots, Evans said.

“In this election, it was the lip of (ballots) causing jams,” she said. “I had a 40-card test day, and how does that compare to 1,500 that actually show up to vote? (We weren’t) testing under true election conditions.”

This caused some of the ballots to have to be removed from the bin more often than normal, Evans said.

The record numbers weren’t just in East Lansing, as 5.1 million people, or 68 percent of the state’s registered voters, voted Tuesday, said Kelly Chesney, spokeswoman for Michigan’s Secretary of State. The last time that percentage was exceeded was in 1960, with 72 percent of registered voters, but at the time, that only translated into about 3,000 voters, she said. Overall, 136.6 million Americans, or 64.1 percent, voted this year, The Associated Press reported.

Staff writer Jeff Kanan contributed to this report.

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