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Different Reasons Draw Lackawanna County Voters

LACKAWANNA COUNTY — Republicans and Democrats in our area have their chance Tuesday to pick the person they would like to see as the nominee for President...
lacka vote

LACKAWANNA COUNTY -- Republicans and Democrats in our area have their chance Tuesday to pick the person they would like to see as the nominee for President of the United States.

Pennsylvania is among five states in the Northeast picking presidential nominees.

We stopped at several polling places throughout Lackawanna County and for the most part, voter turnout is higher than in most primary elections.

In Taylor, it's the presidential race that's most interesting to voters. In other parts of the county, a contested state house race kept the polls busy.

We met Roy Kirschenheiter stumping for Donald Trump all alone at the Keyser Valley Community Center in Scranton.

"Very slow," Kirschenheiter said.  "There's only me and one other lady here for anybody. She's for the delegates on the Democratic side.  I'm here for the Republican side, but it's very, very quiet."

Kirschenheiter counted about 300 people by noon, a low number for this usually busy polling place.

In South Abington Township, it was a completely different story.

"We have more turnout now than for a lot of years we would have for the whole day. It's been a steady thing. There were four here waiting when we opened the doors. It's been a steady line through," said Bruce Hopkins, judge of elections.

Hopkins has been a judge of elections for more than a dozen years and he has voter habits pretty well predicted by now.

There are fewer voters when the forecast is rain.

"Poor weather usually cuts the turnout down, but they were coming in the rain today, and that's unusual," he said.

Rain didn't deter voters in Lackawanna County's mid valley either. The judge of elections at a polling place in Jessup thinks the draw was a contested state house race on the Democratic ticket. Voter turnout was already close to those in presidential general elections.

"It's 2:00 and we have about 215 votes already. Normally at this time, we'd have about 125-130. I expect about over 500 here today," said Ken Marchegiani, judge of elections.

Judges of elections we talked to said they get a rush right around 6:30 p.m. It may be the only time where voters may have to stand in a line to cast their ballots.

The polls close at 8 p.m.

Get the latest election results here.

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