County voter turnout up from primary
Unofficial results very close on Tuesday night
Turnout for Tuesday’s election was way up over the August primaries in Yuma County, approaching a 50 percent mark rarely seen in non-presidential cycles.
There were 87,457 Yuma County residents who were eligible to vote Tuesday, an increase of more than 2,000 over the primary. As of 10 p.m., turnout was being reported at 41 percent, including all early ballots received as of Sunday night and vote center tallies from eight of nine locations.
Early results posted around 8:30 p.m. included 27,828 early ballots that had been received as of Sunday night. That alone is well above the grand total of 20,576 votes tallied after the Aug. 28 primary election.
Early ballots that were mailed to or dropped off at the county recorder’s office early this week, plus early ballots returned at the vote centers, were still to be counted.
County spokesman Kevin Tunell said the nine vote centers closed at 7 p.m. with 8,977 voters casting ballots, and nobody left in line. “That’s interesting, that tells me that it was a very smooth process,” he said.
That nearly tripled the number who voted in person for primary elections Aug. 28, when 3,386 used the county’s brand-new polling place equipment; those who dropped off their early ballots that day outnumbered them by about 120.
As the vote centers were closing, County Recorder Robyn Stall worth- Pouquette said the level of participation she was seeing was unprecedented for a non-presidential election here.
“I would expect our turnout to hover at around 50 percent, which has never happened for a midterm in Yuma County. That’s weird,” she said.
Sixty-four percent of registered
Yuma County voters participated in the November 2016 presidential election, the highest level seen in recent memory.
In local races, unofficial results for Proposition 411 were very close Tuesday night. The citizens initiative asked Yuma voters to decide whether they want to pay an additional halfcent sales tax to fix city roads. The levy would raise about $10 million annually, enough to fix 20 miles of city roads per year.
Unofficial results as of 10 p.m. indicated 48.09 percent, or 8,065, voted “yes,” and 51.91 percent, or 8,707, voted “no.”
A “yes” vote supported increasing the city’s sales tax by one-half of 1 percent effective Jan. 19 “solely for the purpose of fixing potholes, improving existing roads and replacing asphalt.”
A “no” vote supported leaving the current tax rate.