Precinct 20 voters cast their ballots at Fort Hall Elementary.
By ROSELYNN YAZZIE
Sho-Ban News
FORT HALL — Due to high voter turnout Bingham County Precinct 20 at Fort Hall Elementary ran out of printed ballots.
Kayla Dixon, a Bingham County poll worker, said they had 400 votes by noon and called in for more ballots and received 100. By 7:30 p.m. those ran out, so they had to go to the electronic votes and had to get more machines.
She explained, “The county only issues so many votes per precinct and then they’ll have to print off more. We ran out of what was available for our precinct and then they were printing off more, which was the delay, which where we had to use the electronic vote machines.”
Dixon said at 7:30 p.m. a poll worker usually goes out and announces the polls are closing in 30 minutes. At 8 p.m. someone goes out and announces the polls are closed. They lock the doors and whoever is in the building at that time gets to vote.
“We had a huge voter turnout, it was amazing. It was good to have the reservation kind of heard this way,” said Dixon.
Rhue Olney Broncho posted a photo on her Facebook page showing a long line of voters waiting to cast their ballot. She waited for an hour and a half to vote.
Broncho wanted to vote because it was important to her to see Democratic candidate for Governor Paulette Jordan be elected. She was pleased to see a lot of Natives out voting.