GREENFIELD — Voter turnout in Hancock County in the 2018 election was the highest midterm election turnout in nearly 30 years.
Initial statistics from the county clerk’s office show 30,443 ballots were cast. With more than 53,000 registered voters in the county, that puts turnout at about 56 percent.
The last time Hancock County topped that percentage was in the midterm general election of 1990.
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At that time, voter turnout was 61 percent, with 13,995 of Hancock County’s 22,737 registered voters casting ballots, according to records kept by the state election division. In the 1994 midterm election, voter turnout was 53 percent.
Election results and voter turnout for 2018 won’t be officially certified until Nov. 16.
Hancock County Clerk Marcia Moore told the Daily Reporter she and the local election board headed into Tuesday expecting vote totals TO be more similar to the midterms of 2014 and 2010.
But votes in 2018 outpaced those elections by a handy margin, according to state records.
Votes in 2018 more than doubled the 2014 turnout, when 14,464 Hancock County residents — 28 percent of registered voters — cast ballots. In the 2010 midterms, 23,137 votes were cast for a turnout of 44 percent, according to state records.
That high voter turnout made for a late night Tuesday.
Moore and her team didn’t leave the Hancock County Courthouse Annex — where they’d tabulated votes in the basement — until after 10 p.m. following nearly 14 hours of work.
Election workers reported to the annex at 7:45 a.m. Tuesday and, after a brief training, started started sorting and opening the 15,828 envelopes that held ballots cast during this year’s early voting cycle.
That work kept them busy until about 3 p.m., and they started counting votes soon afterward, Moore said. They were still counting early votes at 6 p.m. Tuesday when polls closed.
When a crowd of about 100 people — made up mostly of candidates and their supporters — showed up at the annex around 7 p.m. Tuesday expecting to see election results, Moore asked for their patience.
Another hour pasted before early votes were officially counted and released; and it was only after that the election workers started tabulating the ballots cast on Election Day. That’s the way they’ve always worked, Moore said — counting early and absentee ballots first before starting on Election Day ballots — and they decided to keep with tradition.
Moore joked that years ago, when votes were counted in the county courthouse and the clerk used a chalkboard to update results, everyone would have been waiting for totals until after midnight without a care. They’d have just settled in, visited, reconnected with their neighbors.
But in an “instant-microwave society,” everyone expects immediate results, she said with a laugh.
“We’ve spoiled everybody,” she added, still chuckling.
Technology might make things faster, but it comes at the cost to peace of mind, Moore said.
The current election board — made up of Moore (she’ll soon be replaced by Clerk-elect Lisa Eberhardt Lofgreen), Republican John Apple and Democrat Bob Bogigian — has decided that paper ballots should be used in local elections in some fashion because it offers a backup to any technology.
Should anything go wrong — say, a computer malfunctions or a software system breaks — the paper ballots are there to be counted, Moore said.
The election board’s position might change in the future; members with differing opinions might join the board, she said. But for now, paper is king in Hancock County.
The county piloted new touchscreen voting machines at two early voting sites this election cycle. The general feedback on the machines was positive, Moore said. Voters seemed to like the large font size the screens offered and that they were easy to use, she said. But even those machines generate a paper ballot.
There were few snafus Tuesday as election results were coming together.
Poll workers at McCordsville Town Hall and the Hancock County Public Library were delayed in returning their ballot boxes to the courthouse annex after minor paper jams with machines there. A technician was sent to double check the equipment as a precaution.
A set of ballots from another vote center needed a police escort to the annex after the two poll workers transporting them were involved in a minor car accident along State Road 9 in Greenfield. No one was injured in the crash.