On a perfect day for voting, the Pa. primary generates a ‘super-low turnout’

A primary election day that was wall-to-wall splendid around here with unimpeded sun and a generous ration of April warmth was absolutely perfect for voting. And evidently for not voting.

With nominees already essentially chosen for president — and not everyone is happy with them — and U.S. Senate and a general absence of passion, indications were that 70% or more of voters in the region and across the state decided this primary wasn’t worth their trouble.

Based on reports from polling places, Lauren Cristella, president and CEO of the election-watchdog group Committee of Seventy, said she expected final figures to show a “super-low turnout.”

No major problems were reported, and certainly no one was complaining about long lines.

“It’s my slowest day,” said Ellen Chenoweth, a veteran poll worker in South Philly’s Pennsport neighborhood. By 6:30 p.m., only 116 people, 17% of the registered voters, had cast ballots.

Near closing time, an estimated 210,000 of the 900,000 eligible Philadelphians had voted, a third of those by mail, based on voter surveys by the Sixty-Six Wards Turnout Tracker. The final numbers were likely to fall well short of totals in 2020 and 2016.

“It has been a lot of sitting around,” said Roxborough poll worker Katharine Rossman. “I have been on the phone a lot.” Around 6:30 p.m. she said that since polls opened only 67 of 580 registrants had voted.

Given that many voters are dissatisfied with the option of choosing between Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican former President Donald Trump, and that the primary results would be meaningless, it may well work out that more people voted in the Democrats’ five-way attorney general race than for the president, said Cristella.

Even in that case, the voters didn’t view the choices as polarizing: “They like all the candidates,” she said.

Passions were running high in Franklin Township, Chester County — but not over any of the races, or anything else on the ballot. Among the campaign signs outside the Cornerstone Presbyterian Church polling place were “Save Big Elk” signs expressing opposition to a proposed campground at Big Elk State Park. But for the township it is unifying rather the polarizing. ”It’s a bipartisan issue,” Dawn Dooling, a township supervisor, said outside the polling center there. “Everyone is against it.”

Elsewhere in the county, enthusiasm appeared to be wanting, said West Chester Councilperson Sheila Vaccaro, who voted at West Chester University’s student center. “It’s not a thrilling one today,” she said.

She added that she was voting out of duty on a day that appeared to belong to the ritual voters, the kind who always show up. Among them were Judy McGullam, 77, of Langhorne, a “strong Democrat” who voted along with her husband, Dennis McGullam, 81, at Neshaminy High School. “If you want to speak up, you have to vote,” she said.

The lack of voter traffic was a leitmotif from opening to closing times all over the region.

At St. Thomas Syro-Malabar Catholic Forane Church in the Bustleton section of the Northeast, only seven people had voted by 8 a.m., vastly outnumbered by parishioners filing in for morning Mass.

It was a quiet morning in Wharton Square in Point Breeze, save for the sounds of sidewalk construction. By midmorning a mere trickle of voters had all but dried up.

At polling places in the City of Chester, Delaware County, poll workers outnumbered voters. Outside Chester High School, cars whizzed by, many with their windows open to take in the refreshing April air. Activist Zulene Mayfield shook a cowbell, trying in vain to get their attention. “It’s primary day. It’s time to vote. Let’s go!” she yelled. ”There’s no excuse, it’s a beautiful day,” she added

Party officials at the Mallery Recreation Center in Germantown were left to reminisce about the 2020 general election when Pennsylvania saw it’s highest percentage of voting-age population — 67% — cast ballots since the acrimonious 1968 election when Republican Richard M. Nixon narrowly defeated Democratic Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey to win the presidency.

In the 2020 November election, a line of voters six rows deep covered the basketball court. ”We hope to reenact that,” said Kevin Poole, a Democratic committeeman who has worked at this poll for six years.

The fate of presidency notwithstanding, Wesley Wheatley, 42, of South Philadelphia’s Whitman neighborhood, says that primary elections are the most important time to vote — especially on down-ballot races.

“These are the ones [that] keep our state representatives accountable to us,” she said.

That’s why teacher Kim Walker, 39, was sitting on a bench outside the polling place at the bocce court at Marconi Plaza. She was scrolling through news articles for a crash course on the down-ballot races. ”You’ve got to look up who these people are, we don’t know them,” said Walker.

For Sam Bansner, 34, who voted for North Philadelphia Democratic State Rep. Malcolm Kenyatta. the down-ballot races matter. ”I vote in all primary elections,” said Bansner, outside his polling place in Dickinson Square Park. “There’s always an important race.”

That obviously was not a unanimous sentiment among the electorate. For whatever reasons, said Nicole Anderson, 43, a poll worker at Richmond Elementary School, where only 23 voters had shown up by 6:20 p.m.

”Even for a primary it’s been really, really slow,” Anderson said. “I think people feel like the candidates are already selected, so there’s not big decisions in the primary maybe.”

In West Chester, Virginia Davis said she voted for very personal reasons. Her mother, Shirley Davis, was a local election judge, and always said every election matters, big or small, primary or general.

“Plus, if I didn’t vote,” Davis said, “I’d be afraid she’d come back and haunt me.”

Inquirer staff writers Jake Blumgart, Jesse Bunch, Ximena Conde, Nate File, Beatrice Forman, Rita Giordano, Zoe Greenberg, Maddie Hanna, Lynette Hazelton, Max Marin, Erin McCarthy, Michelle Myers, Jason Nark, Mike Newall, Ariana Perez-Castells, and Henry Savage contributed to this article.