Voting issues at Fort Hall
On Tuesday, Americans turned out in droves to vote, making the 2018 midterms the first ever to surpass 100 million votes.
This higher than expected turnout proved to be troublesome in some areas of Southeastern Idaho.
At Fort Hall, the 20th Precinct of Bingham County, more ballots were cast, 655, than during the 2016 presidential election.
“We anticipated that we had enough printed ballots, but we ended up running out of those printer ballots,” Bingham County elections director Danette Miller said.
The elections office generally orders the ballots about two months prior to election and bases the numbers off previous turnouts.
Nearly 200 people showed up to register and vote on Tuesday, “over the top” numbers, according to Miller.
It was the large turnout that made it necessary for people to use the express voting machine and for the elections office to bring down two more machines from Blackfoot.
Since the lines were still “intense,” Miller received word from the Secretary of States office that it would be okay to make copies of the ballot.
These copied ballots had to be hand counted since they wouldn’t register if they were run through the DS2000 voting machine.
“In all reality, we really did not run out of ballots,” Miller said. “It might have been a little frustrating there, thinking that because they couldn’t have that printed ballot that they weren’t going to be able to be allowed to vote, but we really did have a backup plan.”
Randy’L Teton, public affairs manager for Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, said she wished that the elections board reached out. Saying she would have told them to “double the ballots.”
According to Teton, the slowed down voting meant that some voters had to stand in line for well over an hour and that many decided to leave without casting their ballots.
The large turnout was no surprise to Teton since Paulette Jordan was on the ballot.
“That’s the difference,” Teton said. “A Native on the ballot.”
And although Teton was disheartened, votes were nearly triple that of the 222 cast at Precinct 20 during the 2014 midterms.
