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County Clerk: voter turnout typical, expected

Voter turnout in both the City of Galesburg and the rest of Knox County averaged at just more than 19 percent Tuesday — for Knox County Clerk Scott Erickson, that’s on par with other elections.

Erickson tells WGIL don’t read too much into Illinois being unique in requiring primary voters to declare a party as a potential reason for the low number, because changing that wouldn’t help.

“Party affiliation, for us, is a critical piece,” says Erickson, “because we have to assign election judges to the poling locations — a certain number of Republicans, a certain number of Democrats. If you take out the party affiliation piece, then it makes it harder for us to be able to assign judges that are going to be equally-balanced.”

Erickson says there may be some aspects of a primary that would be helped by making it open, but definitely not all of them.

Erickson tells WGIL despite attention being given to the state’s voting system after hackers previously trying to infiltrate it, there weren’t any problems in that regard.

“I’m lucky enough to have been appointed to some state-wide cyber task forces for the election side of things,” says Erickson. “We’ve been working with law enforcement officials and Homeland Security, and different federal groups, to try to make sure that the election process is safe, secure, and run properly.

Erickson says you’d be amazed at what some of those who work on the so-called “dark web” can do in order to mess up any system, let alone one used in an election.

Neither Galesburg nor the rest of Knox County reported any polling place problems.

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