With several uncontested primary races on the Seward County ballots, a low 22.48% county-wide voter turnout may not have been a surprise last week.
The surprise may be that every voter who showed up in Seward County May 14 came with the necessary photo identification.
Every. Single. Voter.
Seward County Election Commissioner Sherry Schweitzer said new provisional voting categories were added for people who did not have identification, but not one person in the county’s precincts needed to take advantage of the option to cast a provisional ballot and report to the county clerk’s office with the proper identification after the election. (Eleven provisional ballots were cast for other reasons.)
The Nebraska Secretary of State’s office had run a pre-election day campaign to remind people of the new voting requirement, and Schweitzer said she prepped county poll workers to ask for identification without exception – even if the voter was their spouse – to comply with the law.
But she said people were ready and poll workers did not have to ask.
Votes will be canvassed and the numbers reconciled between counted ballots and voter sign-in sheets in the next week or so, which is the standard for Nebraska.
Schweitzer said the Secretary of State’s office picked a Seward County precinct at random to be audited in this election. With this practice two Democrats and two Republicans from Seward County who were not involved in the election except as voters are asked to hand count votes for three races on that precinct’s ballot.
This works similarly to financial or accounting audits, in which some random verifications are used to test the system. Counters and other details remain confidential. Several precincts across the state are tapped for the audits.
Schweitzer said this is a little different for Seward County, where she has conducted a manual audit of 250 ballots each year prior to the election to verify that counting machines are operating correctly.
This year she completed four of those manual ballot audits prior to primary election day. All four tests were on the mark, she said.
“We’ve been doing this, probably forever,” Schweitzer said of pre-election tests. The manual counting audit started about 10 years ago.
“For everybody else that voted, it’s over, but like everything else, it takes time,” she said.
In all, only 2,545 of the county’s 11,323 Seward County registered voters showed up to the polls. Most of the voters were Republican (2,072), which may have been in part because four Republicans were seeking the unopposed nomination to the Seward County Board of Commissioners in Districts 2 and 4.
About one-fourth of the county’s registered Democrats voted (520), with 9 percent of the county’s non-partisan voters (205), 8 percent of the county’s Libertarians (13), and 5 percent of the Legal Marijuana NOW Party voters (2) showing up to the polls.
Schweitzer said Utica’s E Precinct reported a high 50 percent turnout as area residents cast their ballots on the issuance of bonds for a new swimming pool. The measure failed with 200 people voting against the move to allow the village board to finance the pool with a bond issue, and 116 voting in favor of the bond issue.
With primary ballots being segmented by party affiliation, the only race on all Seward voter ballots was the race for the District 5 seat on the University of Nebraska Board of Regents, in which local voters favored incumbent Rob Schafer with 1,341 votes over challengers Gary L. Rogge (606) and Jerome Wohleb (233). Those margins were similar to the district wide voting, in which Schafer won with 22,259-10,422 margin over Rogge and Wohleb garnering 7,529 votes.
Some Seward County voters participated in the Lower Platte South Natural Resource District’s Subdistrict 1 election, in which Carla M. McCullough Dittman was elected with around 46 percent of the votes. She defeated Don Jacobson, who had 34 percent of the subdistrict-wide voting, but led in Seward County with 132 votes compared to Dittman’s 108. Rod DeBuhr took 20 percent of Seward County’s votes and ended up with 19 percent overall.
Other Seward County residents had a say in the Norris Public Power District election, in which Alan A. Wallman won with 36 percent of the votes, over James A. Zvolanek (33 percent) and Kenny Myers (30 percent). In the Seward County totals, Myers was the favorite with 38 percent of the votes compared to Wallman’s 34 percent.
In the national races, Seward County voters joined the Republican and Democratic parties to advance Donald J. Trump and Joseph R. Biden Jr. to the November general election.
The Republican voters in Seward County advanced Pete Ricketts and Deb Fischer over their challengers in the senate categories, and Mike Flood in the congressional slot. Democrats voted for unopposed candidates Preston Love, Jr., and Carol Blood to run against Ricketts and Flood, respectively.
