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FARMINGTON, Utah (AP)-- New electronic polling machines were a clear winner with voters in Farmington -- earning the city one of the highest turnout rates in any of the 18 municipal elections statewide.
The new touch-screen, ATM-like machines won praise from voters and election judges alike.
"Just like anything that's brand-new, things have to be explained," said 83-year-old Lloyd Green, an election judge for more than 20 years. "But it's not difficult, heavens no. You just push the one you want."
Farmington is the first Utah city to use the new machines. State election officials purchased the machines at cost of about $3,000 each as part of an effort to comply with the federal Help America Vote Act of 2002. Triggered by voting irregularities in Florida in 2000, the law was passed by Congress and calls for updated voting machines and modernized registration practices.
More cities will use the machines during the November general election, with all 29 Utah counties expected to have them in place for primary elections in June 2006.
Election judges and county clerks appreciate that the new machines alleviate the need for recording ballot numbers or hefting heavy boxes full of ballots to be counted.
But more time was spent giving voters instructions, judge Diane Wheeler said.
Drizzly, gloomy weather conditions were being blamed for low voter turnout statewide and in some cases for handing incumbents a pink slip or delaying race results.
Incumbent mayors were kicked out of office in several races. In others, where only a handful of votes separate candidates, county clerks are awaiting counts of absentee and provisional ballots before declaring a winner. Some results won't be available until next week.
Salt Lake County Clerk Sherrie Swensen bemoaned the low turnout seen in many cities. In Murray, for example, just 4,300 of 27,000 registered voters -- about 16 percent -- went to the polls.
"You can't get people excited about these races, and they're so important," she said.
In Davis County, voter turned our ranged from a low of 6 percent in Clinton, to 11 percent in West Bountiful, 14.5 percent in Layton and 24 percent in Farmington, County Clerk Steve Rawlings said.
Rawlings attributed Farmington's numbers in part to curiosity over new voting machines.
Disabled rights activists also praised efforts by state and local officials to improve voting access for citizens with disabilities.
A 2004 survey by the Salt Lake City-based Disability Law Center identified problems in 370 of the state's 392 polling places, meaning that only about 6 percent were fully accessible. And the center identified 150,000 people with disabilities who could have voted in 2000 but didn't because of access problems.
"This is a very large voting bloc and, unfortunately, it's been a very disenfranchised block," center executive director Fraser Nelson said.
It was unclear in Tuesday's primary how many of those problems persist, but Lt. Gov. Gary Herbert promised the problems are fast being diminished.
The center survey found many of the access impediments had a simple fix, including re-striping a parking lot to moving a rubber mat from a doorway. Others require more attention, such as the retrofitting older buildings or moving polling locations altogether.
Herbert praised the electronic voting booths for the access it will provide to the disabled. Because the machines have an audio capability, visually impaired voters will be able to cast ballots privately and independently for the first time.
"That's a milestone. That's a red-letter event for the state of Utah," he said.
(Copyright 2005 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.) APTV-10-05-05 1013MDT
