PHILADELPHIA — A primary election day that was wall-to-wall splendid around here with unimpeded sun and a generous ration of April warmth was absolutely perfect for voting. And evidently for not voting.

With nominees already essentially chosen for president — and not everyone is happy with them — and U.S. Senate and a general absence of passion, indications were that 70% or more of voters in the region and across the state decided this primary wasn’t worth their trouble.

Based on reports from polling places, Lauren Cristella, president and CEO of the election-watchdog group Committee of Seventy, said she expected final figures to show a “super-low turnout.”

No major problems were reported, and certainly no one was complaining about long lines.

“It’s my slowest day,” said the veteran poll worker in South Philly’s Pennsport neighborhood. By 6:30 p.m., only 116 people, 17% of the registered voters, had cast ballots.

Near closing time, an estimated 210,000 of the 900,000 eligible Philadelphians had voted, a third of those by mail, based on voter surveys by the Sixty-Six Wards Turnout Tracker. The final numbers were likely to fall well short of totals in 2020 and 2016.

“It has been a lot of sitting around,” said Roxborough poll worker Katharine Rossman. “I have been on the phone a lot.” Around 6:30 p.m. she said that since polls opened only 67 of 580 registrants had voted.

Given that many voters are dissatisfied with the option of choosing between Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican former President Donald Trump, and that the primary results would be meaningless, it may well work out that more people voted in the Democrats’ five-way attorney general race than for the president, said Cristella.

Even in that case, the voters didn’t view the choices as polarizing: “They like all the candidates,” she said.

Passions were running high in Franklin Township, Chester County — but not over any of the races, or anything else on the ballot. Among the campaign signs outside the Cornerstone Presbyterian Church polling place were “Save Big Elk” signs expressing opposition to a proposed campground at Big Elk State Park. But for the township it is unifying rather the polarizing. ”It’s a bipartisan issue,” Dawn Dooling, a township supervisor, said outside the polling center there. “Everyone is against it.”

...continued

©2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC. Visit at inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.