Credit: Tom Sofield/LevittownNow.com
Turnout for Tuesday’s municipal primary election in Bucks County was 25.5 percent.
The percentage of county’s 476,127 registered voters took part in voting in-person and through mail-in and absentee ballots. Primary elections are closed in Pennsylvania, but all registered voters could cast their ballot on the four ballot questions.
Advertisements
The county counted 121,000 ballots, of which 38,755 were mail-in or absentee ballots. Republican votes outnumbered Democratic votes by about 2,100.
In the 2019, municipal primary had 14.6 percent of voters turn out. The percentage was 12.11 percent in 2017, 12.11 percent in 2015, and 11.26 percent in 2013.
While turnout for the primary was higher than past recent municipal primaries, it was lower than recent primaries with national races on the ballot.
Advertisements
A total of 34.04 percent of voters turned out for the 2020 primary, 20.33 percent in 2018, and 41.22 percent in 2016.
Bucks County Commissioner Bob Harvie, who heads the Board of Elections, said the county’s election process ran smoothly.
Advertisements
Harvie commended election staff and those county employees who headed to the Administration Building in Doylestown Borough to help prepare and count ballots.
“We had representation from almost every county department,” Bucks County Chief Operating Officer Margie McKevitt said. “It ran like a well-oiled machine.”
The county did report one problem on election day.
Advertisements
“We would love to be able to say everything went flawlessly yesterday, and I think for a very, very long time it did,” Harvie said. “We did unfortunately have an issue with the vendor who works on our website where we communicate our results.”
The problem caused delays with uploading results and didn’t provide a full list of unofficial results until early morning.
Advertisements
Harvie said he was “not real happy about it,” especially after the county was assured the problem was fixed after a similar snafu in 2020.
Officials will be meeting to discuss the next steps to tackle the issue, Harvie said.
Advertisements
Less than 2,000 overseas ballots, military ballots, provisional ballots, and ballots flagged as potentially defective are yet to be counted, but will be reviewed during next Tuesday’s Board of Elections meeting.
Report a correction via email | Editorial standards and policies
