Big Election Day turnout created challenges, but few problems
Nov. 7—With about 85% of active voters casting a ballot Tuesday, Saco City Clerk Michele Hughes knew it would be a late night.
What she didn't anticipate were the number of ballots that had to be counted by hand.
Poll workers in Saco used 14 tabulators to count ballots on Election Day and had started processing more than 7,100 absentee ballots a week earlier to get a jump start.
But the number of ballots that could not go through the machines because they weren't properly filled out delayed the whole count by about two hours, Hughes said.
"The ovals weren't filled in or the person decided they wanted to do a check mark or an X rather than filling in the oval," she said.
Maine's huge election turnout, and the large number of new voters who registered in the weeks before the election, created some challenges, from polling place lines to delayed counts. But overall, the problems were manageable, according to the state's top election official.
"All across Maine we saw yet another smooth, safe, secure election," Secretary of State Shenna Bellows said. "Clerks worked incredibly hard and for very long hours to make this election accessible to all."
The overall turnout in Maine was still unclear on Thursday. Emily Cook, spokesperson for the secretary of state, did not return calls or emailed questions Thursday afternoon about the status of the state's count.
Maine has a legacy of higher-than-average turnout. In 2022, the state saw the highest turnout in the country, with 61.8% of voting-age citizens — or 73.3% of active registered voters — casting ballots.
Maine has a piecemeal system of posting election results. Some towns post them online as soon as they're done counting. Some send the results to the Associated Press and the Department of the Secretary of State and call it a night, while other clerks may wait until the following day to report numbers. Unlike other states, Maine has no central statewide database for the public to see the results.
The city of Portland, usually one of the first to post complete results, was still waiting on absentee ballot tallies at midnight Tuesday.
Any slowdowns in counting or reporting the results, however minor, meant many races weren't called until Wednesday afternoon. Some close races still hadn't been called on Thursday.
While voter turnout was reportedly high across the state and some people had to wait in line for hours to vote, there were no major issues reported, Bellows said.
On Wednesday afternoon, she said the office was still receiving results from clerks, who have two days to certify results.
Bellows said she had not heard of any major delays in vote counting. Many clerks worked until 2 or 3 a.m. Wednesday to count ballots, which took a bit longer for tabulators to process because they were 17 inches long. Most towns had two ballots, but some had a third for municipal races and referendums.
"It's always more important for municipalities to get it right than to get it fast," she said. "We're seeing clerks use common sense to make sure those results are accurate before they report them to the state."
The League of Women Voters of Maine, which sent volunteers and staff to observe polling places in 83 towns, reported voters faced few obstacles or disruptions at polling places. Poll observers reported 54 polling paces had wait times over 10 minutes and 23 polling places had wait times over 45 minutes.
"Broadly speaking, the few issues reported were isolated in nature and did not lead to large numbers of voters unable to complete their ballots," the league wrote in its post-election report.
In Portland, some people waited for two hours in line to cast ballots or to register to vote. There were still people waiting to vote in Portland 10 minutes before polls closed.
The high voter turnout coupled with the length of the ballots contributed to the amount of time it took Portland to process them through the machines, city spokesperson Jessica Grondin said. It also takes longer at the end of the night to process any write-in candidates, she said.
In smaller communities where there is rarely a wait to vote, voters found themselves in longer lines than they expected.
Westbrook City Clerk Angela Holmes said it took "a lot longer" than usual to process all of the ballots because the city used all 10 of its tabulators. It takes a while to shut down each machine, get the results and then combine them as cumulative results. That entire process can't start until all of the voters who were still in line when polls closed registered and cast their ballots, she said.
More than 10,800 voters cast ballots, including roughly 6,200 who voted absentee, in town, Holmes said Thursday. That's about 500 fewer than the number of people who voted in 2020. Still, that translates to 67.8% of registered voters and 79.6% of active voters, she said.
Holmes said voters were generally able to check in or register and fill out their ballots quickly, but there were occasional bottlenecks as they fed their three ballots — two state and one for municipal races — into the tabulators. When that happened, poll workers would briefly pause the check-in process to let the area clear out.
Holmes said none of that was unexpected during a presidential election with a strong voter turnout.
"There's a lot of interest and a lot of votes to tally," she said.
Turnout in Cape Elizabeth was roughly 83%, according to the town's unofficial results. Just over 6,900 ballots were cast.
Jessica Hughes, South Portland's city clerk, said nearly 16,000 people voted there — 70% of all registered voters. About half of voters used absentee ballots, she said.
"We were right on target with what we were expecting," Hughes said on a Wednesday afternoon phone call. "I think it was, overall, a very smooth process throughout the entire day, at every location."
Staff Writer Daniel Kool contributed to this report.
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