Unexciting races, weather blamed in primaries as residents stay home
Amid citywide voter turnouts of 7, 12 and 18 percent, Genola city had the best turnout — although the number was still below half.
The city had 47 percent turnout: 284 of 604 residents who showed up at the polls to vote for two City Council members and a mayor.
Provo also had a weak showing, evidenced by the polling results.
The first Provo precinct to report had only four ballots cast out of a pool of 984 registered voters.
That precinct is located around the Provo City Library at Academy Square, which is surrounded by apartments filled with Brigham Young University students.
"We have a lot of students who registered for the presidential election last year, and they didn't come out again," said Provo City Recorder LaNice Groesbeck.
"That is low," Groesbeck said. "But we didn't have a primary for mayor, and we had bad weather."
Mayor Lewis Billings does face a challenge from Dave Bailey, who nearly unseated Billings four years ago. No primary was necessary because they are the only two candidates.
Yet for those who did cast ballots, a large majority gave another vote of confidence to incumbent Orem councilmember Karen McCandless who led with 1,676 votes — almost 500 votes higher than her nearest competition.
Second and third place were the two other Orem incumbents — Shiree Thurston and Dean Dickerson — with 1,205 and 1,033 votes, respectively. Newcomers to the political race — Kelvin Clayton, Zachary T. Napierski and Daryl Berlin — were more closely bunched and all at fewer than 1,000 votes.
However, it appears Pleasant Grove Mayor Jim Dankleff did not survive the primary, according to the unofficial results.
But Tuesday night's results are not technically official because of the provisional ballots. A provisional ballot — filled out by people who claim to be registered in a given precinct but don't show up on the precinct's records — must still be verified and counted.
By law, cities have to count and confirm those ballots between Friday and Tuesday, meaning the official primary results will not be available until a week after the election.
However, the provisional ballots are unlikely to make a difference in final counts, as few provisional ballots were recorded. Eagle Mountain reported 18 provisional ballots, compared to 748 votes.
Election officials in Lehi said they did not have an exact count on provisional ballots but said there would not be enough to significantly change the unofficial results.
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