NEWS AND TRIBUNE
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> SOUTHERN INDIANA —
Less than 18 percent of voters in Floyd County and about 15 percent in Clark County cast ballots in Tuesday’s primary election.
Nearly 13,000 ballots were cast in Clark County — 7,174 in the Republican Party primary and 5,810 in the Democratic Party contest. Floyd also had more GOP voters, with 5,724 votes cast, compared with 3,881 in the Democratic Party primary.
Clark County Clerk Barbara Bratcher-Haas said the early voting within her office — one barometer by which officials gauge electoral interest — had been very slow this year, with only 1,057 absentee votes this time.
“As we traveled around the county [Tuesday], some people didn’t even know it was Election Day.”
She said she thought the Republican senatorial primary between Richard Lugar and Richard Mourdock would drive turn out more than it did.
“The election board decided to order more GOP than Democratic ballots because we thought that race would bring in more,” she said.
The 2012 numbers are down from the last primary with county offices — 2010. About 20 percent of registered voters cast votes in Clark County that year; 18 percent of Floyd County voters did the same.
Those numbers were down from 2011’s municipal election numbers.
— Editor Shea Van Hoy and Staff Writer David A. Mann contributed to this report.
