Nearly 30 percent of Cape County voters turn out for primaries

Twenty-nine percent of registered voters in Cape Girardeau County cast ballots in Tuesday's primary election.

Of 51,360 registered voters in Cape Girardeau County, 14,959 went to the polls Tuesday. A total of 657 absentee ballots were turned in.

Tuesday's turnout is higher than in the last nonpresidential primary, in 2006, when voter turnout was a little more than 20 percent.

"The people are coming out in droves," said election supervisor Lois Boston at one of two precincts voting in the Arena Building on Tuesday. She cited statewide ballot measure Proposition C as contributing to the high voter turnout.

Voters flowed in and out of the polls in a steady stream all day, according to several election workers.

"There has never been a time all day when we didn't have somebody in here voting," said Dolly Jewell, election judge at Westminster Presbyterian Church in Cape Girardeau.

A faulty memory card caused delays in county voting tabulations Tuesday night with final results coming in just before 11 p.m. Data from three precincts, including Fruitland, Gordonville and Byrd 3, had to be manually entered by election workers from a tape printed out from the ballot counting machine, Cape Girardeau County Clerk Kara Clark Summers said.

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