Voters turned out in droves after polls opened at 7 a.m. despite inclement weather.
DeKalb Voter Registration and Elections Director H. Maxine Daniels predicted roughly 70 to 75 percent turnout of registered voters for the general election.
“We expect the same number of voters today as in 2008, but when they’ll go is hard to predict,” Daniels said. “We had a good morning rush, which is typical for a presidential election … the rain has not dampened spirits at all.”
Daniels noted that, with weather forecasts calling for better condi-tions later in the day, many resi-dents may opt to wait until evening to visit the polls.
By noon some DeKalb precincts were still experiencing heavy voter traffic while others had slowed down considerably, she noted.
Although 20,000 more voters are registered than in 2008, per-centage-wise, voter turnout will likely remain the same, Daniels said.
“Things are a little different from 2008,” Daniels said. “We saw an early rush then, but after that [traffic] was very light because more people voted early.
“There seems to be not quite as much voter intensity now as there was in 2008.”
DeKalb officials have already issued a fair share of provisional ballots to accommodate those with ambiguous registration status.
“We have a lot of voters who think they’re registered, but are not,” said Daniels. “If someone is not registered but think they should have been, by law we are to offer them provisional ballots … just in case.”
Elsewhere, some precincts re-ported technical difficulties with voting machines.
“We didn’t have any more [problems] than normal … just the usual stuff, because the machines are older,” Daniels said. “But, because we have so many it shouldn’t be a problem.
“We can just shut them down — we have more than enough.”
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