Utah voters break a record for presidential primary participation
Mar 3, 2020, 7:54 PM | Updated: Mar 4, 2020, 5:51 am
It may take time before a vote tally and delegate count can finalized in Utah's Super Tuesday presidential primary. (Image credit: Getty Images.)
(Image credit: Getty Images.)
This story will be updated.
SALT LAKE CITY — Utah voters turned out in force for their first Super Tuesday primary. And it shows.
The Utah state elections office reports that by 7 p.m. on Super Tuesday, 32.5% of active voters had voted.
2020 has officially become the highest turnout Presidential Primary Election in Utah state history at 32.5% active voter participation (479,771 votes) – and still counting!
Still want to vote? Polls close at 8pm.
Find out where at https://t.co/B2BWWZyCzv#utpol
— Vote Utah (@ElectionsUtah) March 4, 2020
Director of Utah Elections, Justin Lee says the active voter percentage surpassed the 2008 primary election.
“Right now we’re sitting at 33.1%. The previous record (February 2008) was 32.4%,” Lee told KSL NewsRadio.
There were issues, though
The voting process wasn’t smooth sailing everywhere, however. Some changes designed to make voting more convenient in Weber County may have backfired.
Elections officials say they tried to consolidate their resources into one polling location. The idea was to help make the voting process faster. But, residents like Mindy Burton say no one told them ahead of time of the consolidation.
“It just comes off, like we don’t want to encourage people to vote,” she said, “when there’s not more proactive communication from our cities and the people that host where we can go vote.”
Elections officials say they plan on learning from the mistakes made regarding these changes, and make adjustments if they need to.
