Many things are historic about President-elect Barack Obama’s victory Tuesday, but registered voter turnout in most of the Washington region was not.
Nearly all jurisdictions secured extra voting machines and volunteers to keep lines running smoothly, but while many precincts reported that residents lined up an hour or more before polls opened — and many voters endured long waits in the morning — there were few reports of lines during the evening.
In Virginia, preliminary information available Friday afternoon said 3.7 million, or about 73 percent, of the 5 million registered voters cast ballots in the presidential election Tuesday. In the 1992 election, Virginia had 84.5 percent turnout.
Susan Pollard, spokeswoman for the Virginia State Board of Elections, said the state has nearly 2 million more people registered to vote now than in 1992. She attributes the dramatic gains to a 1996 decision to begin allowing Virginians to register to vote while getting their driver’s license.
“In terms of the way voters turned out, however, this was definitely a historic election,” Pollard said. “We had almost 40 percent of people casting their votes before 10 a.m. on Election Day, and large localities like Richmond, Virginia Beach and Fairfax closing at 7 p.m. with almost no lines.”
Elections officials noticed similar trends in Maryland. More people were registered to vote and cast ballots than ever before, but only 76 percent of them cast ballots compared with 81 percent in the 1992 presidential election.
Experts predicted Obama’s status as the first black presidential nominee for a major party would easily drive historic turnout in the heavily African-American District of Columbia, but that wasn’t so, either.
D.C. elections spokesman Dan Murphy said officials were predicting about 63 percent turnout once all absentee votes were counted. The District had 77 percent turnout in the 1984 election.
“I think perhaps evening rain may have kept some people away,” Murphy said.
