In Fulton County’s only contested primary race Tuesday, Aubbeenaubbee Township Trustee Gary Feece won his party’s nomination for the Nov. 7 general election.
Feece won 75.7 percent of the vote, or 109, to Bill Russell’s 35 votes.
Turnout for Tuesday’s primary was 14.44 percent of the county’s 14,194 registered voters, one of the lowest ever in Fulton County.
This year, 2,049 registered voters made it to the polls; 774 of them asked for Democrat ballots and 1,273 for GOP ballots.
During the 2004 primary, turnout was 18.82 percent of the 14,393 registered voters in the county.
Best local turnout was in Wayne Township, where 107 of 452 registered voters, 23.67 percent, hit the polls. Rochester Precinct 1 voters turned out in the fewest numbers, with 9.2 percent, or 89 voters casting ballots. Rochester 1 covers the north side of town.
The vote count was hindered by hassles with computerized counting. Ovals on the ballots – which voters colored in with black permanent markers – were too wide for scanners to read.
Poll workers were able to use the county’s new touch-screen voting machines, designed for the visually handicapped, to count the ballots.
In some polling places, Miller said, the touch-screens were used as an alternative to the paper ballots and regular counting machines.
Precinct poll workers began delivering their ballots and totals to the Fulton County Courthouse by 6:30 p.m. Final totals were posted shortly before 8 p.m.
Said Clerk Miller: “I was sweating.”
“It was just getting everything tied together. We missed a couple loops,” she said of the computer cabling and printer.
As Miller’s office staff retired for the night, and candidates filtered out of Republican headquarters across Main Street, volunteers Bob Miller and Fred Bohm were still posting numbers on the results board that traditionally attracts an election crowd. Nobody was there to watch, however.
In November’s general election, there will be a rematch between U.S. Rep. Chris Chocola, R-2nd Dist., who is seeking a third term, and his 2004 opponent, Democrat Joe Donnelly.
Of the 1,273 Republican ballots cast, Chocola took 816 votes to Tony Zirkle’s 409. Donnelly earned 638 votes to Steve Francis’s 105 votes.
Throughout the Second District, Chocola earned 70 percent of the vote to Zirkle’s 30 percent. Donnelly earned 83 percent of the Democrat vote to Francis’s 17 percent.
Donnelly received more than 29,000 votes to Chocola’s nearly 37,000 in 2004, and he has raised more money this year – more than $415,000 – than in his previous campaign, The Associated Press reported.
A Tuesday challenge from Donnelly to Chocola to run the race with $75,000 or less was rebuffed, The South Bend Tribune reported. Chocola said he made a similar offer earlier that Donnelly turned down.
Chocola has recently been targeted by the liberal group Move-on.org, which runs commercials saying he’s been caught “red-handed” and tying him to GOP scandals. The most recent claims he protected oil companies from price-gouging laws.
