Officials Say No Problems With New Voting Equipment

| November 7, 2019

VENANGO CO., Pa. (EYT) – Election officials say the election went smoothly in Venango County.

According to Venango County Elections Coordinator, Jamie Kirkwood, elections officials had no trouble at all with the new voting equipment during Tuesday’s election.

“Overall it went very well,” Kirkwood told ExploreVenango.com.

While Kirkwood noted that they are still working on finalizing the official election counts, the unofficial elections results show that there were 10,834 ballots cast on Tuesday. With 30,643 registered voters in Venango County, that leaves the voter turnout rate at around 35.4 percent.

Though that figure may seem low, traditionally municipal elections see a lower turnout than state or federal elections, and other counties in the region didn’t see much higher turnout numbers.

In neighboring Clarion County, Director of Elections Cindy Callahan said unofficial results show 8,960 ballots were cast in Clarion County on Tuesday, out of 22,987 registered voters.

While that means only about 38.9 percent of the registered voters in the county votes in this election, Callahan pulled up data from 2015 that showed it isn’t an unusual turnout rate.

At the time of the 2015 municipal election, there were 22,386 registered voters in Clarion County, and 8,793 of them voted, for an overall turnout rate of 39 percent.

“We had fewer registered voters then, and fewer people voting, but the turnout percentage was almost the same,” Callahan noted.

Callahan said in this year’s election, the turnout rates varied widely from precinct to precinct throughout Clarion County, with the lowest rates down around 20 percent, and the highest rates around 50 percent.

The highest turnouts were in Foxburg Borough, where 52 percent of the registered voters cast a ballot, and in Elk Township, where the turnout was 49 percent.


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