Wayne County Board of Elections reports a successful, issue-free election
By Ethan Smith
Published in News on November 8, 2016 9:50 PM
Wayne County's election went smoothly, with no reports of issues at the polls and all results rolling in shortly after 9 p.m. Tuesday, board of elections officials said.
Nearly 70 percent of all eligible voters in Wayne County cast a ballot during the 2016 election.
"We've had an awesome day of voting today and the elections have went fantastic," said Board of Elections Director Dane Beavers. "We're very excited about the turnout. We've had very little problems, just a few people that showed up in the wrong precinct, and those kind of small things we can fix easily."
Beavers said results came in rapidly because of a new process implemented by officials.
During the March primary, the chief judge of each precinct had to bring in the results themselves after the precinct closed.
This year, precincts sent designated runners to the board of elections, allowing results to come in a full two hours earlier than they did in the primary election while other precinct officials stayed back and closed up the voting sites.
There was a higher voter turnout than there was in 2012, also, Beavers said.
"There were no issues," Beavers said. "We had a very good 17 days of early voting and I would say at 98 percent of precincts there were no long lines. People were able to vote quickly."
All precincts were able to close on time at 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Beavers said.
Nearly half of all eligible voters in Wayne County cast ballots during early voting and officials beefed up the number of check-in stations at every precinct to ensure a quick and painless voting process.
"We had no delays or issues with results coming in tonight," Beavers said. "The process overall of getting results in quicker was a huge success."
No members of the general public were at the Board of Elections on North William Street Tuesday night to watch the numbers come in on the screen in the conference room at the building.
"A lot of this success is a direct reflection of Dane (Beavers) and his team, and they hard work they've done to get everybody organized and get everybody trained," said Wayne County Board of Elections Chairman Doug Wiggins. "Early voting went well, there were basically no lines except for the last hour of the last day of early voting. He has done a marvelous job and I think a lot of the success goes to their hard work and their organization."
Wiggins said the process of casting a ballot during election day was expedient and there were no lines to hold people up.
"It was pretty much walk up and vote," Wiggins said. "The longest line I saw all day long was five people in line and they were not there more than four or five minutes."