UPDATE:  Election Officials Say Voting “Light”, “Steady”

UPDATE 4:20pm - “It’s awfully light,“ is the answer you’ll get if you ask officials in the Washington County Election Commission office a question about voter turnout this afternoon.  With just a few hours left until the polls close, administrators and election volunteers are seeing fewer voters cast ballots than in past elections. 

The answer is a bit different in Sullivan County, where one election worker at the central Election Commission office described voter turnout today as “steady”, but only up a bit from past elections.

News Channel 11’s Amber Miller visited Towne Acres Elementary School in Johnson City today to gauge voter turnout, the central voting location for two precincts.  Election volunteers there saw a spike in the early morning and early afternoon hours, but described the location as virtually “dead” most of the day.  Historically, Towne Acres is one of the busier voting precincts in Washington County. 

Election workers at Towne Acres attributed the low turnout to a heavier-than-average early voting pace.

News Channel 11, Tricities.com and the Bristol Herald Courier will keep tabs on results throughout the evening and bring you real-time results here and in television updates, as well as a full wrapup of events in Friday’s newspaper.

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Scattered showers and a three-page ballot will greet Sullivan County residents who take part in today’s Republican and Democratic primaries.

Three Republicans, including the incumbent, are seeking their party’s nomination to run for Tennessee’s 1st District seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. Two Democrats are seeking the seat, while five Democrats are looking for a chance to challenge U.S. Sen. Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., in the November election.

Voters also will cast ballots in local contests. Two candidates are running for the Sullivan County Commission’s 3rd District seat, five people are running for the commission’s 6th District seat, and 39 people hope to fill one of 24 county constable slots up for grabs.

“We do have some contested races on the ballot,” Elections Administrator Gena Frye said Wednesday.

The county’s property assessor and four school board members are running unopposed, as are the Republican and Democratic candidates for local seats in the state Senate and House of Representatives.

While she hesitated to predict voter turnout for today’s contests, Frye said the county has already seen “a pretty good early voting turnout.”

According to the Tennessee Division of Elections, 4,073 people cast ballots in the county’s early voting period, which ran from July 18 to Saturday.

It is about half the number who cast ballots in early voting for the August 2006 election, but more than the 3,748 people who voted early in August 2004.

Frye said every county polling place will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. today. Those who vote at schools should watch out for traffic in the mornings and afternoons, she said, because classes are in session. 

She said voters will have to declare whether they want to participate in the Republican or Democratic primary, although they do not need to be a registered member of either political party to do so.

Those who do not want to take part in either primary can request a ballot for today’s general election and vote only in the local contests, she said.

Voters should take identification to the polls.

As for Election Day weather, News Channel 11 Chief Meteorologist Mark Reynolds said voters might want to have an umbrella handy as well. He predicted a 40 percent chance of scattered showers and thunderstorms today.

Reynolds blamed the rain on a front that is passing through the region. He said today’s high temperature will be about 82 degrees and the low is expected to be 58.

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