Voters met unexpected lines when more than 14,000 people came out to cast their ballots Tuesday.
The county’s turnout in the primary election reached 18 percent this year, which was more than election officials had predicted after only about 4,000 people cast ballots before Election Day.
Voters stood in line at multiple vote centers across the county, from Mount Pleasant Christian Church to the Franklin Community Center. At Greenwood Christian Church, voters were casting ballots until 7:30 p.m. ← more than 90 minutes after polls closed.
Exasperating the lines were continued problems with electronic poll books at most vote centers, where slow internet access and unreliable coverage forced some centers to send voters to another location.
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Though the issues were fixed, they created slowdowns throughout the day, Johnson County Clerk Susie Misiniec said.
“The heavier turnout is wonderful. We didn’t want to turn anybody away. But people needed to have patience with us,” she said.
Election officials had hoped for at least a 10 percent turnout this year based on the number of races on the ballot, including contested races for sheriff and U.S. Senate. But when early voting was slow, they were doubtful that target would be reached.
“We were really caught off-guard,” Misiniec said. “We didn’t double-staff at any location, because we thought that a staff of five (poll workers) at each would be enough.”
In addition to the higher-than-expected turnout, vote centers also had problems with the tablets used to check voters in and look up their ballot.
Internet access would slow down, making some of the poll books unusable. At Greenwood Christian Church, voting was stopped for about 30 minutes while technicians fixed the problem. The internet access at Mount Pleasant Christian Church went down about 1:45 p.m., but was rebooted and came back shortly after.
Spotty internet access was a problem at a majority of polling places, Misiniec said.
“At first we thought it was just at various locations,” she said. “But it’s not. It’s kind of everywhere.”
In the weeks leading up to Election Day, the clerk’s office ran tests on internet access at each of the vote centers, ensuring that the networks worked properly, Misiniec said. At no point did they encounter this problem, she said.
Technicians set up wireless hotspots that by mid-afternoon had remedied the problem. But the root cause of the issue has not yet been determined, Misiniec said.
“Things are working better now, but with the heavier turnout, it put us behind the eight-ball,” she said mid-afternoon. “Patience was going to have to prevail from the voters’ standpoint.”
The county’s software contractors and voting officials will work to determine the cause of the internet problems and how to fix them leading up to the general election.
“Things have gone well, but there have been snafus. It’s not anything that couldn’t be corrected, but this internet thing has us all scratching our head ← how do we anticipate it, how do we prepare for it,” Misiniec said.
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Here is a look at turnout on Tuesday compared to past primary elections:
2018;18 percent
2014;9 percent
2010;22 percent
2006;16 percent
2002;19 percent
SOURCE: Indiana Secretary of State’s office
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