Election Day Sees 18 Percent of Registered Voters

Poll workers in the Whitcomb High School gym had seen just a light trickle of voters come through their booths by Tuesday afternoon on Election Day.

It was a scenario poll worker Pat Bontempo, who has been working Glendora city elections since 1962, was all too familiar with.

“Some years are busier than others,” said Bontempo. “If there’s a controversial measure, then you’re really busy. But this year, it’s been really slow…Glendora elections are basically really low.”

Voter turnout in this year’s Glendora city election matched 2009 election numbers at 18 percent of registered voters. According to City Clerk Kathleen Sessman, 5,547 of the 30,194 registered voters in Glendora came out to vote during Tuesday’s city election. According semi-official results, 14,726 votes were cast for seven city council candidates (including vote-by-mail ballots).

Voters in this year’s election elected

In 2009, 5,302 ballots were cast out of 28,987 registered voters. Voter turnout during the 2007 election fared better with 26 percent of registered voters, with 7,341 voters arriving at polls out of 28,225 of those registered.

“The turnout [in this year's election] wasn’t really anything to jump up and down about,” commented Mayor Ken Herman, who did not seek reelection.

The scene at Goddard Middle School, 859 E Sierra Madre Ave., was different, with poll workers accounting for a steady stream of voters.

By the afternoon, poll worker Patricia Giles said their precinct had seen about 250 voters.

“I think we’ve been doing really well,” Giles said.

Herman attributed the numbers to low voter turnout in the southern portion of the city, which traditionally sees fewer voters than precincts in the north.

“I always wondered why that is,” said Herman. “The people [in the south] are quite frankly the ones who complain the most, which I don’t understand. The council has taken an unbiased approach to the north and the south without any kind of favoritism.”

On the day of the election, city council candidate Erica Landmann-Johnsey and supporters waved signs on the corner of Bonnie Cove and Gladstone avenues to encourage more voters in the south to cast their ballots.

Landmann-Johnsey, who came in sixth in voter precincts, said she hoped to inspire more residents from south of the city to make their voices heard in the election.

When speaking about the division between north and south Glendora, Landmann-Johnsey said the lagging participation of voters in the south stems from feelings of exclusion in government policy.

“Living in south Glendora, I know the general impression of the people is that we’re not being heard, we’re not being represented, and only one area of Glendora is being represented,” Landmann-Johnsey said in her candidate interview with Patch. “We feel ignored and taken advantage of.”