Willow Glen Resident

News

Voters stream to polls in hotly contested election

By Stephen Baxter

In a highly anticipated presidential primary election on Feb. 5, Santa Clara County voters cast more than 344,000 ballots at polling stations and by mail.

With all county precincts reporting on Feb. 6 at 9 a.m., 55 percent of Democratic county voters chose Hillary Clinton and 39 percent picked Barack Obama. Statewide, Clinton took the lead Wednesday morning with 51 percent of the vote, with nearly all precincts counted.

On the Republican side, 50 percent voted for John McCain, compared with 26 percent for Mitt Romney and 9 percent for Mike Huckabee.

In the Rose Garden neighborhood, poll workers at Lenzen Gardens senior center at 893 Lenzen Ave. said they had a steady stream of voters, and 147 people had cast ballots by 2:25 p.m. Unlike in previous elections that used more electronic voting machines, the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters decided to use paper ballots and one electronic voting machine at each polling place.

If a voter's name was not on the roll, the voter had to fill out a pink provisional voting affidavit and a provisional ballot.

"It's a little bit more confusing this year with all the paperwork," said Lanae Isaacson, a poll worker on Lenzen Avenue. "But overall it's been pretty smooth."

In Willow Glen, 77-year-old Rosalynn Haydis has organized a polling place at her house on the 2000 block of Jonathan Avenue since 1994. Though 198 people had cast ballots by 2 p.m. Feb. 5, she said fewer residents came in compared with other elections because more people voted by mail. Haydis said some voters were confused with the paper ballots, which required them to fill in a black arrow pointing to their choices.

"We just ask if they had any trouble," Haydis said. "Then if they say 'I circled all of them!' we let them try again."