It appears Cobb County is set for another low turnout on an off-year primary election.
Janine Eveler, head of Cobb elections, said at noon Tuesday that preliminary numbers show the county is flirting with about a 17 percent turnout. In 2014, the number turned out to be 17.6 percent.
“I would love to have more,” she said.
Eveler said she has a call with a representative group of precincts at 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. that her staff uses to extrapolate the countywide turnout estimate.
Here's what has been going on in Cobb today:
READ | Cobb voters defy mid-morning rain
READ | Cobb voters are out at the polls on an expected rainy Election Day
As of 10 a.m., she said 5 percent of the county’s 473,000 voters had cast their ballots Tuesday — 2 percent of those came in person Tuesday and 3 percent had already voted either by mail or during advance voting.
Eveler said it's usual for a large rush to come as folks are heading home from work, but Mother Nature could siphon votes away. And then there's the expectation that the gubernatorial elections will go to a runoff.
“If it’s a downpour, they’ll say ‘forget it’ and wait until November,” she said.
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Even when the ballots are in and the polls are closed, Eveler said there could be a hiccup.
The county needed poll workers and was forced to promote many assistant poll managers to leaders at thier precincts.
She said that 20 percent of the county’s 141 precincts have new managers.
“They’re probably going to be more careful than fast,” she said.
And that could mean slow returns.
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