Shelby County voters gave their approval to Daniel Hynes as the state’s next Democratic candidate for governor although the statewide numbers may be too close to call.
The governor’s race was just one of a number of state races in a year of dissatisfaction in politics.
Although voter turnout was less than 24 percent in Shelby County, each vote counted in the selection of party candidates to square off in November.
Gov. Pat Quinn received 29 percent of the Democratic votes while his challenger Dan Hynes received 70 percent of the votes.
Republican voters gave the nod to downstate Senator Bill Brady for the governor’s office with 47 percent of the votes.
The U.S. Senate race for President Obama’s former seat saw five Democrats and six Republicans vying for election.
Alexi Giannoulias received 48 percent of Shelby County Democrat votes while Mark Kirk received 43.5 percent of the Republican votes.
(Complete election results can be found on page 2.)
Shelby County saw 23.52 percent of registered voters cast their ballots Tuesday for a variety of state and local offices.
“I was disappointed that people weren’t exercising their right to vote,” said Carolyn Halbrook, Shelbyville 7 election judge. “We had 125 out of 500 registered come in and vote. There’s been times when we had 85 percent turnout.”
“It was a very important election for us. It was the voters’ opportunity to be heard,” said County Clerk Kathy Lantz. “There’s so much work that goes into this (election) and the voters were not taking advantage of the opportunity.”
Lantz noted that the number of absentee and early voters during the past six weeks was also low - an indicator of the low voter turnout on election day.
The new “undervoting law” also angered some voters when their ballots were rejected at the box.
“We had a lot of undervotes. It wasn’t that big of a deal. If the voter said they wanted to vote that way, we just pushed a button to accept it,” Halbrook said. “We tried to make sure the secrecy of the vote was not compromised.
“People weren’t happy, but they understood it was the law,” Lantz said. She added that lawmakers are working to get the law repealed before the general election in November.
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