Voter Turnout On Track To Break Record

by Christine Stuart | Nov 6, 2012 8:16pm
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Posted to: Election 2012, Town News, State Capitol

Secretary of the State Denise Merrill said Tuesday that the state seems to be on track to break its voter turnout records.

In 2008, a whopping 80.5 percent voters headed to the polls to elect President Barack Obama. Turnout was 78 percent in 2010 and Merrill said it looks like voter turnout could top 80 percent again this year.

Aside from the presidential contest, Connecticut is looking to elect a U.S. Senator and a congressman or woman in the 5th Congressional District, where there hasn’t been an open seat in 14 years.

But as with any election there’s glitches. Merrill said it’s good and bad news that huge numbers of voters are turning out to vote, but it means they may have to wait longer than five minutes in some cases.

Manchester, New London, Norwich, and Branford were all reporting big turnouts, Merrill said around 6 p.m. Tuesday.

Lines were reported in West Hartford and New Haven and Waterbury.

“I wasn’t expecting it to be quite as strong,” Merrill said. “But an awful lot of money has been spent this year to try and get people to vote.”

And everything seems to be going smoothly in Bridgeport where they failed to order enough ballots in 2010 and needed to seek a court order to keep the polls open an additional two hours.

Republican U.S. Senate candidate Linda McMahon’s campaign filed a lawsuit Tuesday evening, but withdrew it almost immediately Merrill said. She said an “unofficial checker” was upset he or she was seated too far away from the “official checker” at a polling location in Bridgeport.

She said once the campaign discovered Connecticut doesn’t have any regulations regarding the proximity of checkers it was withdrawn.

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