Gary Morgan described this election as much more personal than others, given its focus on local candidates rather than state and federal races.

“People seem to mostly come in to vote if they know someone who is running,” said Morgan, an election judge who worked at the Glen Ellyn Public Library on Tuesday. “Otherwise, they may not vote.”

Paul Conti, who worked as an election judge alongside Morgan, said that by 5 p.m. Tuesday, 185 of 1,324 registered voters in the two precincts that use the library as a polling place had cast ballots. He and Morgan said they were hoping to see a voter turnout of between 10 and 15 percent.

“It’s been steady trickle all day long,” Conti said.

Robert Saar, executive director of the DuPage County Election Commission, said the voting numbers were light all over, particularly in comparison with November.

“We had about 420,000 voters cast ballots in the November election,” Saar said Tuesday. “We’ll have about 100,000 voters today.”

Of the county’s 544,073 registered voters for this year’s election, 18.39 percent cast ballots in city and village races; 18.09 in park, fire and library races; 3.94 percent for propositions; 20.56 percent in school races; and 20.56 percent in township races.

Election officials said the November races brought out record numbers of people due to the presidential contest between Barack Obama and John McCain. In DuPage County, 96,500 people participated in the early voting program in November, Saar said, compared with 10,316 this year.

By contrast, the early voting total in suburban Cook County was 25,737, according to information from Cook County Clerk David Orr’s office. Early voting for this election ran from March 16 through April 2.

Voting numbers appeared to be higher at the Downers Grove Public Library, said election judge John Scigousky. He estimated that 350 people  cast ballots at the site covering three precincts.

“This is very good for a local election,” Scigousky said. “It’s nothing like the November election. We had between 900 and 1,000 voters then, but this is still a pretty good showing.”

“We saw a spurt in the morning and then in the evening when people started coming home from work,” he said near the end of voting Tuesday. “Now that the trains are bringing people home, they’ll start coming in more. We’re hoping to get somewhere between 35 (and) 40 percent of the vote.”

Saar said there were no major problems at any polling places.

“We saw nothing out of the ordinary,” Saar said. “All in all, I think people conducted themselves in a pretty honorable fashion.”