Despite very low voter turnout for this year’s consolidated election, Mary Jo Noonan managed to glimpse a silver lining.

“Our early voting averaged about 50 people a day,” said Noonan, Lyons Township clerk. “And this was way down from the November election. ... But we did see a lot of young people, college students come back to do early voting. They said they voted in the November election and they wanted to continue this. So that’s a plus.”

Lyons Township had 735 people participate in the early voting program between March 16 and April 2. While statistics about early voting from November were not available at press time, Noonan said it was down substantially from last year’s election.

“The voting numbers today were way down,” Noonan said. “At one place in La Grange out of about 580 registered voters, about 75 people came in. That means this election there will cost about $60 per ballot.”

Of the 1,463,070 registered voters in suburban Cook County for this year’s election, 301,990 cast ballots Tuesday or 20.64 percent (unofficial results), according to information from Cook County Clerk David Orr’s office. This compared with 20.56 percent in DuPage County and 20.03 percent in Kane County.

Election officials said the November races brought out record numbers of people due to the presidential contest between Barack Obama and John McCain. Consolidated elections do not draw nearly the number of voters as do races featuring state and federal candidates, they said.
Rich Carmall, an election judge at First Congregational Church of La Grange, confirmed the low turnout.

“It’s been slow as mud,” he said Tuesday morning. “It couldn’t be more of a contrast with November. But there are very few contested races here. In the first four hours, we had about 40 voters, 10 people per hour.”

Sally Beaumont, an election judge at the Berwyn City Hall, indicated the turnout was slightly higher there.

“It’s been steady,” Beaumont said. “It hasn’t been very busy, but it’s been steady. In the first five hours of this polling place being open, we’ve had about 60 people.”

A total of 971 people took part in early voting at Berwyn City Hall this year, according to Orr’s office. In suburban Cook County, the early voting total was 25,737 this year. By comparison, DuPage County had 10,316 this year, said Robert Saar, executive director of the DuPage County Election Commission.