Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By RICHARD JENKINS
An estimated 2 million Michiganders cast ballots in Tuesday’s election, a new record for a Michigan August primary.
Gogebic County saw 25.6 percent of voters participate in the election, while 30 percent of registered Ontonagon voters cast ballots in that county.
Gogebic County participation was up from past August primaries, according to Gogebic County Clerk Gerry Pelissero. He said the 2016 election that featured all county and township offices had a 22 percent turnout, while the 2014 race that lacked those local contests only had an 11 percent turnout.
“Primary elections are funny. If there’s not something to really get the people out to the polls, they don’t go. If there’s something that drives them, they’ll go,” Pelissero said. “And then there are also the people who absolutely don’t like a primary ballot because they want to be able to pop from party to party.”
Those people stay home until the November general election when they can split their ticket, according to Pelissero, who remembered running into people when campaigning in 2000 and 2004 who wished him luck but said they refused to vote in the state’s primary elections.
Pelissero attributed the higher turnout Tuesday primarily to two local contests.
“This was driven by two things. Obviously it was driven by the probate judge race, and then in the school district I think Ironwood’s bond proposal drew more people out than if it wasn’t on (the ballot),” he said. “Otherwise, the other precincts pretty much had their average turnout I would say.”
Even with Tuesday’s turnout being higher than past primary elections, the numbers still don’t come close to the numbers seen in November general elections.
Pelissero said presidential-year elections — at least since about 2000 — have seen a turnout in the ballpark of 50 percent, while 42-45 percent of voters generally come out for the off-year gubernatorial elections.
Erwin Township had the highest turnout in Gogebic County with 34.2 percent of eligible voters casting ballots while Watersmeet Township had the lowest with 19.8 percent participation. Ironwood Township was relatively close behind Erwin with 32.9 percent participation, Wakefield Township had 29.4 percent, Bessemer had 27.6 percent, Bessemer Township had 25 percent, Wakefield had 23.7 percent, Ironwood’s three precincts combined for a total of 23.6 percent turnout citywide, Marenisco Township had 23 percent participation and Watersmeet’s 19.8 percent brought up the rear. While Ironwood had a total turnout of 23.6 percent, one of the three precincts was more active than the other two — Precinct 1 had 27 percent, Precinct 2 had 20.5 percent and Precinct 3 had 22.8 percent.
The state’s previous turnout record was set in 2002, with a similar dynamic to Tuesday’s ballot: An open governor’s seat; contested primaries in both parties, and the potential of a second woman in the governor’s seat.
About 53 percent of the voters participated in Tuesday’s Democratic primary and about 47 percent chose from the Republican slate.
That compares to 67 percent cast for GOP candidates in August 2010, the last primary with an open governor’s seat and contested races for both Republicans and Democrats.
Gogebic County saw Democratic turnout slightly higher than at the state level, with 57.3 percent of the county’s 3,152 votes for governor going to a Democratic candidate. It was the Republicans with the higher turnout in Ontonagon County, as 55.5 percent of the county’s 1,523 votes for governor went to someone in the Republican primary.
Voter enthusiasm was so high in Oakland County downstate that some precincts ran out of ballots.
Election workers in communities including Ferndale, Berkley, Oak Park and Farmington Hills had to scramble to print more ballots so everyone could vote.
With 94 percent of precincts reporting statewide, 929,794 cast ballots in the Republican gubernatorial primary, where Bill Schuette defeated three opponents for the GOP nomination.
Meanwhile, 1,057,471 cast ballots in the Democrat gubernatorial race, where Gretchen Whitmer won in a three-way race.
Whitmer received 1,165 of the 1,807 votes cast in Gogebic County’s Democratic race, while 710 of the 1,345 votes in the county’s Republican contest went to Schuette. In Ontonagon, Whitmer received 400 of the 667 votes cast; while 342 of the 846 the county’s Republican voters supported Schuette.
In a Tuesday evening post on Facebook, Berkley City Manager Matthew Baumgarten said his city outside Detroit ordered the “the maximum ballots we’re allowed to order and we still had to go to our contingency plan.”
The previous voter turnout record for an August primary was set in 2002, when 1.7 million Michiganders cast ballots to choose between two Republicans and three Democrats competing to replace John Engler as governor.
Democrat Jennifer Granholm and Republican Dick Posthumus were the winners of their respective primaries that August. Granholm went onto win in November to become Michigan’s first woman governor.
Editor’s Note: The Associated Press contributed to this story.
