CHICAGO — Voters practiced social distancing with the election on Tuesday – by staying away from the polls.
Early signs of low turnout in Illinois and Florida offered another sobering reminder of how the coronavirus pandemic is wreaking havoc on the election year. In Ohio, a wild day of pronouncements from elected officials and legal challenges ended in the last-minute postponement of the state’s primary.
Tensions also flared in other states as officials faced a backlash over decisions to forge ahead with their elections.
In Illinois, the number of people who showed up to vote early in the day in Chicago was below even the pace of mayoral contests, which are typically low-turnout affairs, according to an election official. Statewide numbers were also expected to come in low.
Turnout likewise looked skimpy in Florida, according to anecdotal reports. Steve Vancore, a spokesman for Broward County elections, said turnout so far has been light in the South Florida county that has been one of the hot spots for the virus in the state.
Also in Florida, a lawsuit filed late Monday sought extensions of vote-by-mail drop-offs and other accommodations.
In Chicago, the realities of holding a primary amid a pandemic settled in as the entity overseeing the city’s primary grappled with shortages of election judges as well as complaints over a failure to comply with sanitary guidelines of wiping down voting areas. In Florida, there were problems in Palm Beach County polling places because of poll worker no-shows.
There were recriminations in Chicago: The city elections board in Chicago lashed out at the governor’s office for moving forward with the primary at all. Jim Allen, a spokesman for the Chicago Board of Elections, said the board a week ago asked that the primary be postponed or moved to a full mail-in contest.
In a phone call with the governor’s office, “We predicted that there would be fear among voters, that there would be fear [and] legitimate concerns among our poll workers and we would lose legitimate polling places,” Allen said. The elections board recommended moving fully to vote-by-mail.
“This is a lie,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s chief of staff Anne Caprara shot back on Twitter. “And frankly, given what we are dealing with in this moment, I’m disgusted that Jim Allen would lie like this. We offered them the National Guard, young volunteers and assistance with keeping polling places clean.”
Pritzker’s office said it had offered up the National Guard to assist the city on Tuesday.
“Instead of accepting help or offering any solutions of their own, the Chicago Board of Elections decided to wait until Election Day to get on a call with press and make politically charged accusations,” said Jordan Abudayyeh, spokeswoman for the governor.
But Allen noted Pritzker on Sunday ordered the closure of bars and restaurants at the same time he pushed for the primary to move forward.
“To come out at this moment and say there shouldn’t be gatherings of 50 or more people and that even small establishments need to close down and to say there needs to be wiping down of screens … it’s an interesting turn of events,” Allen said.
The news around the virus did see a surge in early and absentee voting. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Monday that early voting in the city hadn’t been that high since World War II era voting.
And thanks to strong in-person early voting and absentee voting, Florida Democrats had cast a total of about 1.1 million votes as of Monday night — about 250,000 more than the day before Election Day in the 2016 presidential primary.
But the low turnout across the state probably put Democrats on pace for 32 percent turnout overall, compared to 38 percent turnout in the 2016 presidential primary, according to estimates from Ryan Tyson, a Republican consultant who leads a top data analysis nonprofit in Florida called Let’s Preserve The American Dream.
In Illinois, “People need to keep in mind that voter turnout for primaries … generally is low,” said Matt Dietrich, spokesman for the state board of elections. “In the last five presidential primaries, turnout has averaged 33 percent. The 47 percent in 2016 was remarkably high.”
Turnout in 2000, 2004 and 2012 were around 20 percent. Turnout for Barack Obama’s first election in 2008 was 40 percent statewide. Dietrich added that mail voting was “drastically higher” statewide and that early voting was also up.
Workers at one polling place in Naples, Florida — a Republican bastion in the southwest corner of the peninsula — said that turnout Tuesday was lower than normal, but steadier than they expected. There were bottles of cleaning spray and disinfecting wipes in plain sight, and workers said they were sanitizing the electronic signature pens and pads after each use.
Asked whether there was any reason to think that Tuesday’s results might be invalid because the coronavirus scare might affect voting, Dietrich said, “Absolutely not.”
Gary Fineout, Marc Caputo and Steven Shepard contributed to this report from Florida.
Source: https://www.politico.com/news/2020/03/17/coronavirus-wreaks-havoc-tuesday-primaries-134124
Droolin’ Dog sniffed out this story and shared it with you.
The Article Was Written/Published By: Natasha Korecki
! #Headlines, #CoronaVirus, #Elections, #Health, #Political, #Politico, #politics, #Trending, #Vote, #Newsfeed, #syndicated, news
No comments:
Post a Comment