By JAKE MOONEY
Daily Progress staff writerAs if there wasn’t enough to worry about in Tuesday’s City Council election, many in Charlottesville spent the day consumed with two questions: whether voters would show up, and whether they would be able to work the machines.
In the end, they did and they could — sort of.
A late-day surge in voting pushed voter turnout numbers to a respectable 22 percent, lower than the 28 percent of the last council election but the same as in 1998, the last time four candidates ran. Election officials, meanwhile, reported no major problems with the Hart InterCivic eSlate Electronic Voting Systems that got their first Virginia test run Tuesday.
During the day, though, there was some uncertainty on both counts. “The first word is ‘quiet,’” Democrat Michael Manto said, sitting outside the Fry’s Spring Beach Club with buttons and stickers for Mayor Blake Caravati and Alexandria Searls. “This is the quietest, I’d say, in the last six elections.”
Across town at the Carver Recreation Center, former Republican council candidate Jon Bright admitted some disappointment at the slow stream of voters that trickled past the station in the parking lot where he handed out Rob Schilling paraphernalia.
As of 1 p.m., 158 people had voted at the precinct, officials said. At the same hour on Election Day in 2000, 263 people had voted.
“It just seemed like a compelling reason to vote,” Bright said of Schilling’s strong campaign. “Of course as a Republican I care who wins and who loses, but I just want to see the entire community participate in the election. … I don’t get it. I’ve been here since 6 o’clock this morning. I was expecting to see car after car after car.”
Bright, whom some Republicans had mentioned as a write-in candidate to accompany Schilling, said a few people told him Tuesday that they would support him. “Maybe three or four, I guess.”
Yards away, Democrat Waldo Jaquith had some write-in tales of his own. While handing out fliers outside the Downtown Recreation Center, Jaquith said, “I had a lot of people — easily a dozen — tell me they were going to write me in. I just told them, ‘Here’s a ballot. I urge you to vote for Blake Caravati and Alexandria Searls.’”
Jaquith narrowly missed winning one of the party’s spots in the council race at a February nominating convention, where he and other Democrats signed an oath to support the two nominees.
Like Jaquith and Bright, few past or present city officials spotted at the polls had an explanation for the low voter participation numbers. Former mayor Nancy O’Brien, voting at the beach club, blamed a low-key campaign and a lack of media attention.
Herman Key, chairman of the city Planning Commission and a Caravati/Searls supporter at the Tonsler precinct, summed up the prevailing bewilderment. “I’m sure the weather played a part, but I don’t know,” Key said, punctuated by a thunder clap. “Maybe it’s a general sense of voter apathy. If someone could figure that problem out, they’d be rich, rich people.”
Stratton Salidis, an independent council candidate who came in last with 614 votes, paused on the Downtown Mall while bicycling to work to weigh in. “I think in general we as a society are not very active citizens, and part of my campaign was really just to get more people interested and to get people thinking long-term.”
The machines, meanwhile, appeared to be a success, even if some voters had reservations.
“I think people are going to mess up on it,” voter Ellen Gwynn said. “I do know someone. … She’s elderly, she’s also very smart. She came to the machine wanting to vote for two people and she left the machine voting for just one.”
At Carver, though, 88-year-old Llewellyn Thomas and his 92-year-old wife, Hilah B. Thomas, reported few problems. “I think the mechanics will work all right if people understand, but I think for a long time they’re going to have to explain it to people,” he said.
The new machines’ biggest payoff may have come at the end of the night, when city voter registrar Sheri Iachetta emerged from her office with election results at the unusually early time of 8:15 p.m. That, she said, was after the city electoral board double-checked the experimental machines’ results.
“I’ll tell you, the election officials loved it,” she said. “We’re going to be out of here before 9 o’clock. That’s unheard of.”
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