March Primary 2012: Voters Avoid the Polls

On the first day of Spring, some Naperville voters headed to the polls to cast their ballots in the March Primary, but according to local election judges the turnout was low.

One election judge blamed the overly nice weather for the low turnout, along with voter apathy.

At , not even 10 percent of the ballots were claimed, said Technical Election Judge Kuldeep Sra. The location had a total of 1,710 ballots printed for the primary and as of 5 p.m. only 165 registered voters had cast a ballot, he said. While some polling places in DuPage County , Sra said there were no issues at his polling location

“The good weather is working against us,” he said. “[Voters] are doing other things. Sometimes people think primaries don’t matter.”

David Garza was one of the voters who did show up Tuesday.

“My view is you don’t vote, you can’t complain,” Garza said. 

Another reason to show up and vote Tuesday was to try and have the best candidates possible in the November election, he said. 

For Mary Lou Rogers, voting is a civic duty and she said she always tries to vote.

“You can’t complain about the issues if you don’t vote,” she said. 

At the Naperville Municipal Center, 141 of 1,200 registered voters had turned out as of 1 p.m., according to an election judge.

"We had a turnout of about 40 percent in 2008," said Election Judge Jay Mitchell. "But I heard they were expecting about 20 percent today. That's our target." 

John Hummel, a Naperville resident for 13 years was voting at the Muncipal Center just after lunch. 

"It looks like turnout is fairly low so far,” he said. “I'm hoping it will pick up, I really do."