“People were here before 6 a.m. to get in to vote,” said Pat Hitchcock, who has been manning a desk on Election Day for 40 years. “It was dark and cold outside, so I let them in, but they weren’t allowed to vote until 6 a.m.
“We’ve seen a nice steady flow all morning,” she continued. “People still expect to see the old lever machines but it’s all written ballots now. We still need electricity for the machine you put the ballot into, but the firehouse has a backup generator in case anything goes wrong.
“We’re seeing more people than usual because it’s a big, big election. We usually have a good turnout for local government, but primaries are on the quiet side.”
Where there any irregularities? “We did have one,” she said. “Somebody voted for too many people so the machine returned the ballot. We gave them another ballot.”
At an adjacent desk, Peach Lake’s Marianne Collins added, “More people brought their kids along today because there’s a two-hour school delay. It was a nice civics lesson for the kids. It was really cool.”
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