News
Counties report high vote turnout
Journal Photo by David Rolfe
Stephanie Smith prepares to vote at Carver High with son R.J. Walker.
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Published: May 7, 2008
Updated: 05/07/2008 02:55 am
Whether on foot, in cars or in a free shuttle van provided by campaign volunteers, North Carolina voters came out yesterday in numbers that hadn't been seen here in more than 20 years.
About 36 percent of the 5.8 million registered voters statewide cast ballots, according to preliminary election results.
In quiet rural counties as well as bustling urban areas, turnout was up compared with recent primaries. For example, about 38 percent of voters in Forsyth County cast ballots. To the west in Wilkes County, the turnout was about 37 percent. In Watauga County, turnout was about 30 percent, according to preliminary results from State Board of Elections.
Many of those voters -- whether young or old, white or black -- were drawn in by the tug-of-war between Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic Party's presidential nomination.
Monica Skipwith, a 20-year-old junior at Winston-Salem State University, was at Sims Recreation Center around 3 p.m to vote for the first time.
She decided to support Obama. "I wanted to make sure my voice was heard," Skipwith said.
By noon in King, 359 people had voted at the American Legion. Chris Huff voted for the first time. Huff, a purchasing agent at SPEVCO Inc., has lived near King all of his life, he said.
"Everybody can make a difference in the world and should take a chance and do what is their constitutional right -- vote," said Huff, 24. "If everybody gets out there and votes maybe they'll change the world."
Albert Newsom, a retired hairdresser, voted in the afternoon at the American Legion.
Newsom, 69, said he has hit the polls ever since he was old enough to vote. These days, he is concerned about the economy.
"I'd like to see prices go down on practically everything, but I don't think they will," Newsom said.
The high turnout was driven in part by early voting.
Nearly 500,000 people statewide voted early or cast an absentee ballot before the primary -- more than half the overall number who voted during the 2004 primary.
In Forsyth County, more than 17,000 ballots were cast early, county elections officials say.
"Normally, we only get a couple thousand in early voting," said Rob Coffman, the director of the Forsyth County Board of Elections. "We knew it was going to be higher -- we didn't know it was going to be that much higher." In Forsyth County, black voters accounted for more than half of those early votes, casting 9,427 ballots.
Women came out in droves to vote early, outnumbering men, 10,602 to 6,387.
The early-voting results also highlighted how the Democratic races have dominated the state's primary season. Of the more than 17,000 ballots cast in Forsyth County during early voting, only 1,754 were for Republican contests.
The GOP races drew fewer voters despite primaries for governor, lieutenant governor, Forsyth County Board of Commissioners race, and other GOP races. And that seemed to continue during regular voting yesterday.
In Lexington, for example, Mary Davis voted for Clinton at Robbins Recreation Center. She said she is concerned about the economy and the war in Iraq. It was important to her that Clinton is a woman and a good candidate.
"I just think whatever topic comes up, she can discuss," Davis said.
Republican voters did make it out to the polls.
Father George P. Vlahos, a Greek Orthodox priest in Forsyth County, and his wife, Betsy, voted for Republican candidate John McCain. The Vlahoses, who are natives of Greece, became U.S. citizens in the 1960s. Voting is important to them, they said.
"With the condition that the world is in, we need to elect people who will protect our … lifestyle," Vlahos said.
Since 1988, the statewide voter turnout during presidential-primary years has ranged from a low of 16 percent in 2004 to a high of 31 percent in 1988, according to the State Board of Elections. Going back to 1988, the top vote-getters in state primaries were Gore in 1988 and 2000, Clinton in 1992 and 1996, and North Carolina's former U.S. senator, John Edwards, in 2004.
Coffman, the Forsyth elections director, said he thought that turnout was higher this year in part because of a focused, grass-roots drive by Obama's campaign. They drummed up interest from college students, put on several registration drives and had a march to the board of elections building for voters to cast early ballots.
"We really did see a lot of effort. I don't think we've seen that before," he said.
Black voters represent nearly 1.2 million of the 5.8 million registered voters statewide. In Forsyth, they represent a similar percentage. Nine out of 10 black voters went for Obama, according to CNN exit polling.
Perhaps that's why Obama's campaign rented seven vans from Avis and drove them to predominantly black neighborhoods in Winston-Salem, campaign officials said.
The plan may have worked. Precincts with large numbers of registered black voters posted some of the largest turnouts.
At the Carver High School precinct, for example, more than 66 percent of the 1,213 registered voters cast ballots. At Forsyth Tech's Woodruff Center, more than 61 percent of the 1,936 registered turned out.
There were some reports of equipment breakdowns, Forsyth elections officials said. Although the glitches caused some delays, they didn't cause major disruptions, officials said.
■ Bertrand M. Gutierrez can be reached at 727-7283 or at bgutierrez@wsjournal.com.
■ Journal reporters Michael Hewlett, Mary Giunca, Danielle Deaver, Sherry Youngquist, Jim Sparks, Lisa Boone-Wood, Blair Goldstein and Monte Mitchell contributed to this article.
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Thursday's relish stories will appear in the Entertainment section.
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