Idaho voter turnout likely 75 to 80 percent

BOISE – Idaho voter turnout likely was 75 to 80 percent of registered voters in Tuesday’s election, according to the Idaho secretary of state’s office.

That would be up from the 74 percent who turned out in the presidential election four years ago. But it’s not as high as the startling figures many counties around the state reported the morning after the election. That’s because those figures weren’t complete – they didn’t take into account same-day voter registrations, which Idaho allows at the polls.

That means the county figures – 88 percent in Ada County, 87 percent in Kootenai County and 90 percent in Bonner County, for example – were comparing the number of ballots cast to the number of voters registered by the registration cutoff on Oct. 14. When those Election Day registration numbers are added in, the percentage of registered voters who turned out falls.

In Ada County, the state’s most populous and the location of the state capital, Chief Deputy Clerk Phil McGrane estimates turnout will end up between 75 and 78 percent. “The percentage turnout should still be, at least in Ada County, very high,” he said.

Statewide, there was a record number of ballots cast, said Chief Deputy Secretary of State Tim Hurst – roughly 695,000 in the presidential race versus about about 666,000 ballots cast in 2012 and 667,000 cast in 2008.

In the past two presidential elections, Idaho has seen roughly 118,000 voters register at the polls on Election Day.

Secretary of State Lawerence Denney is estimating turnout was nearly 80 percent.

“I’m guessing it’s around 75 percent turnout,” Hurst said. “We won’t know until we actually get the Election Day registration numbers back from the counties.” Those will start coming in next week.

Around the state, ballot-counting was slowed this time by the high number of write-in candidates. There were 37 candidates who registered as write-ins for president. Plus, there were write-in candidates for local offices like sheriff in some parts of the state.

Bonner County, for example, had three Soil and Water Conservation District commissioner positions for which no one filed, that had to be decided entirely by hand-counting write-ins.