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Officials in the Democratic Party of Oak Park said late Tuesday that voting here will likely break all previous records. Long lines of people waiting before polls opened at 6 a.m. were a common sight around Oak Park and River Forest this morning.
“Almost every precinct was up by a significant margin,” said Democratic Party of Oak Park Field Director Luke Casson. “We expect it to be above the primary turn out.”
Voting in the February 2008 presidential primary set a record, both locally and in suburban Cook County, with just under 2,000,000 votes cast.
Many precincts, Casson said, saw well over a third of their registered voters cast ballots in the first four or five hours. Election officials at polling places described the crush as exciting and intense.
Joyce Porter, an election judge in Oak Park’s 1st precinct at Hatch School, 1000 North Ridgeland Ave., said there were as many as 150 people waiting outside when the polls opened there.
“It was insane the first hour and a half,” she said. “We processed 125 people the first 75 minutes.”
Similar scenes-and similar numbers-were repeated throughout Oak Park between 6 a.m. and 11 a.m. By that time the 9th precinct at Andersen Center had 187 votes cast, precinct 13 at Whittier School had 236, precinct 11 at the Dole Library 182, precinct 26 at Beye School
302.
The Oak Park Main Library, which hosts three precincts, had an estimated 300 people waiting at 5:30 a.m. The three precinct polling sites in the Veteran’s Room were a beehive of activity shortly before lunchtime.
Oak Park Township Supervisor David Boulanger, who has worked many elections as a judge at precinct 24 at Oak Park and River Forest High School, said today’s turnout is one for the record books. “It’s really big. The biggest (previously) was the primary, and this will exceed the primary.”
Boulanger’s colleague, Linda Garrett, said 286 people came through the precinct during the first five hours, 115 before 8 a.m. That pace generally slowed sometime after 11 a.m. and precincts were largely calm through the early afternoon hours as people straggled in.
After work voters are now beginning to arrive at polling places.
“It’s just starting to pick up now,” Casson said at 4:30 p.m
