Voter Turnout Low Throughout Pine and Richland

Poll workers were drumming their fingers throughout the day as they waited for voters to come to the polls in Pine and Richland townships for today's primary election.

Here is what I saw and heard today as I traveled to polling places in both townships:

-- Pine Supervisor Ted Owen, a Republican incumbent who is running unopposed, was delivering homemade cookies to all the Pine Township polling places to show his appreciation.

Owen has been providing food to poll workers since 2003 when he was chairman of Pine Township's Republican Committee. Everyone becomes friends when working the polls, he said.

"It gives me a chance to see friends," he said. "I do it to say 'Hi'."

He said he campaigned during the morning for his neighbor, Pine-Richland School Board write-in candidate Christine Misback, and incumbent Magistrate William K. Wagner, whose district will include Pine Township starting in January.

Owen predicted the lowest turnout in a decade, noting three factors. First, he said, these are off-year elections. Secondly, the primary elections attract fewer voters than general elections.

Thirdly, "the weather sucks big time," he said.

-- Judge of Election Joyce Douglas, who worked the Pine District 4 polling place at Northway Christian Community Church in Wexford, described the turnout as "beyond slow."

"It's very disappointing," she said, when you consider what is going on in the country now.

"They should be coming out in droves," she said.

-- When I asked Virsel McKinney, a Pine District 7 poll worker at Salem United Methodist Church, what advice she would give to voters, she said:

"Come out and vote. Don't complain if you don't vote."

She and her husband, Raymond, have been poll workers for seven or eight years, she said.

-- By about 5 p.m., 154 votes had been cast at Richland Municipal Building by District 3 voters. 

"[The low turnout] is very sad, and we're usually above the average," said Donna Gillespie, majority inspector for Richland District 3. "It's hard to get people to come out for the local [elections]."

-- Voter Dale Hohman of Richland said he never misses a vote.

"It's one privilege I still have," he said, adding that "there are so many things that take away our freedoms."

-- At St. Thomas Church in-the-Fields, retired Pine-Richland High School teacher Robert Wiskemann encouraged voters to write in for him as a candidate for the district's school board.

The ballot had no names on it for the school board seats to represent Richland.

"I felt bad that this community couldn't find two people willing to serve," he said. So he threw his hat in the ring out of a sense of community service, he said.

-- Ginny Goebel also was at St. Thomas to encourage write-in votes for her candidacy for the school board. She and another school board write-in candidate, Laura Ohlund, worked together to promote their candidacies.

-- Richland poll worker Patty Ferguson lamented the poor voter turnout.

"It's sad. You think of these countries where people stand in line and can get shot to vote," she said. "It just breaks my heart."