DuPage voters mostly stay home; big turnouts in Bensenville, Winfield

Only 20 percent of DuPage County's 544,073 voters cast ballots in Tuesday's election.

With early voting results taken into account, the number of voters who cast ballots Tuesday drops below 19 percent, according to figures from the DuPage County Election Commission.

Robert Saar, the commission's executive director, said turnout hasn't been this low since the 1980s when school board and fire protection district races were held in November and turnout percentage was in the single digits.

"People have more opportunity to vote than they ever have before with early voting and all that stuff, so it's pretty surprising," he said. "Maybe people are exhausted on elections. We've just been through a presidential election with two years of nonstop campaigning."

Some of the more hotly contested races drew big numbers, but other heated races failed to spark voter interest.

Bensenville's municipal races attracted 46 percent of voters, as a slate of challengers led by attorney Frank Soto thumped the incumbents and ousted 6-term Village President John Geils.

A four-way race for three seats on the Winfield Elementary District 34 school board drew 45 percent of the voters to the polls, but those figures were likely bolstered by the contentious four-way race for Winfield's village presidency. Trustee Deborah Birutis emerged victorious from that battle, which attracted 40 percent of the village's voters to the polls.

While sparks flew in the Carol Stream library board race that featured eight candidates vying for four seats, just 13 percent of the district's voters cast ballots. The College of DuPage board race also featured its share of fireworks throughout the campaign season, but it still only managed to draw 20 percent of the registered voters.

Though there are about 170 fewer polling sites than there were for a similar election in the spring of 2007, Saar doesn't believe that had played a part in turnout.

"We had the same number of polling sites in November and we set records with the number of people who voted," he said.

The low turnout comes on the heels of November's presidential election that drew 76 percent of the county's voters to the polls, many who helped Democrats make significant strides in a historically Republican stronghold.

DuPage Democratic Party Chairman Bob Peickert said there were some positives to this campaign, but they didn't translate to victories for Democrats in the township races.

"Last November we had high turnout, and we were successful, and this time it wasn't so high, and obviously the results showed," he said. "While there were positives like more candidates than ever before running for township offices and more people on the streets supporting us, it's clear we're going to have to get the message to vote out earlier and more frequently."

Despite concerted efforts in Addison Township to unseat the Republican incumbents, Democrats fell well short in the races there. The tightest partisan races in DuPage came out of Naperville Township where Democrat challenger Tom Wronski lost to Republican Gary Vician by less than 500 votes.