Voters cast their ballots at the Greenwood Public Library during the primary election on May 2, 2023, in Greenwood, Indiana. The library was one of the busiest vote centers, where a number of Greenwood residents voting for the contested mayor and numerous city council races cast their ballots.
Ryan Trares | Daily Journal
At polling places throughout the county on Tuesday, long lines were in short supply.
Voter turnout was expectedly low during Tuesday’s primary election, as only 11.4% of registered voters cast their ballots, according to Trena McLaughlin, Johnson County clerk. A lack of compelling contested races, and the nature of municipal elections, likely contributed to the lukewarm response.
“It’s been pretty slow,” she said. “Municipal elections are always a lower turnout.”
Voters taking the Republican ballot had choices for every city and town, though only Bargersville, Franklin, Greenwood, Prince’s Lakes, Trafalgar and Whiteland had contested primaries. Only Johnson County residents who lived within municipal boundaries could vote this year.
“Even though we had contested races down in Trafalgar and Prince’s Lakes, we didn’t really have the turnout we thought we would down there,” she said. “The main areas have been Greenwood.”
The contested Greenwood mayoral race drove turnout in that area. Polling places at locations such as the White River Library and the Greenwood Public Library were steadily busy all day long, poll inspectors said.
Though it’s never completely clear what is driving voting in any given election, poll inspector Heather Overton seemed confident it was driving voter turnout in the area.
“Definitely the mayor’s race. It seems to be a point of interest for the whole community, to be able to impact that race,” said Heather Overton, poll inspector at the White River Library.
Multiple people in areas such as White River Township and Trafalgar tried to vote, only to learn they did not reside within the municipal borders to do so.
“As we’ve talked to our poll inspectors, we have heard that. In some of our smaller locations, who haven’t had as many voters, they have had voters come in who were not eligible in this election,” McLaughlin said.
Other than that, the vote centers experienced few problems Tuesday, McLaughlin said. A few of the VVPAT, or voter-verified paper audit trail machines experienced paper jams, but once the paper was fixed, the machines worked fine.
The system prints off a receipt that shows how a person voted onto the voting machine. State law requires all counties to use a paper trail by next year, so Johnson County will be using the VVPAT for both early voting and on Election Day this year.
A total of 80,933 Johnson County residents who live in municipalities were registered and eligible to vote in the primary election. Of that group, 9,196 voted.
Municipal election primaries typically feature lower turnouts, as past results have shown, McLaughlin said. In the last municipal election in 2019, 11.9% of voters cast a ballot in the primary.
The turnout was only 7.9% in 2015, though it was 15.4% in the 2011 race — a year that saw contested races for both Greenwood and Franklin mayors.
For the primary, 3,004 people cast their vote through in-person early voting by close of early voting at noon Monday, according to Johnson County Voter Registration. Early voting was up from the 2019 municipal election, where 2,701 people cast their ballots early.
Another 340 had mailed in absentee ballots.
“It’s really hard to predict in a municipal election, whether you have contested races or not, how the turnout is going to be,” McLaughlin said.
AT A GLANCE
Voter turnout in municipal primary elections
2023: 11.4%
2019: 11.9%
2015: 7.9%
2011: 15.3%
— Information from the Johnson County Clerk
