Poll Workers Catch Up On Reading During Primaries

There doesn’t seem to be much excitement over in Stonington. Polls opened at six and a slow trickle of registered Republicans and Democrats were showing up to vote in primaries for their respective parties this morning.

“It’s dead,” Stonington Registrars of Voters Linda Camelio said. “The poll workers are asleep.”

By 9:30 a.m., only 48 people, less than 4 percent of the registered Democrats and Republicans had voted in District 1 at the . District 1 has 832 registered Democrats and 490 registered Republicans.

Voter turnout is expected to be low throughout the state. According to CT News Junkie, Secretary of the State Denise Merrill predicts statewide voter turnout to be at about 25 to 30 percent. That’s a big difference from six years ago when during Connecticut’s first August primary 43 percent of registered Democrats turned out to vote, many voting for Ned Lamont and against the Iraq War.

The slow voter turnout provides some opportunities for Tuesday’s poll workers though. At the Stonington Borough Firehouse poll workers were catching up on some summer reading. On their poll worker tables were a book on the U.S. Supreme Court by William H. Rehnquist and another book by former GE Chairman Jack Welch.

Polls close at 8 p.m. and results, once announced at Town Hall, will be posted on Stonington, on our Facebook page, and tweeted.