Issues drive local voters to polls

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By Deirdre Cox Baker | Wednesday, November 8, 2006 2:17 AM CST | () comments

Shirley Keppy identified the national issues she cares about the most and made a graph to try to help her decide how to vote before driving to  Unitarian Church in Davenport and casting what she called the “most   important” ballot.

“We need to make a change, badly,” she said, her voice spiced with excitement and passion. “If we want to save our country, we must vote,” she added, citing the various challenges facing America, including the war in Iraq and the economy.

America’s condition also is of grave concern to Betty and George Scherer, Bettendorf residents who voted Tuesday at the Assembly of God Church. Betty Scherer, who is retired from the Bettendorf School District, hopes a new governor will help raise teacher salaries in Iowa.

Jeri Borden found it hard to vote this year because all the negative advertising that           preceded Election Day. She and her husband, Bob, decried the unwanted campaign telephone calls and said that when they went out of town for two days, 16 election-related calls were left on their answering machine.

“All those television ads said what one candidate or another didn’t do,” she said. “We never learned what they did care about.”

The Bordens voted at the Rogalski Center on the St. Ambrose University campus in Davenport, joining 134 others who had voted by the noon hour. Poll workers said it was a busy morning, and they had some excitement when the voting machine broke.

Scott County officials brought in a new one.

Park View, Iowa, poll workers were faced with a full house at the Neil Armstrong Elementary School precinct and ran out of the “I voted” stickers by 7:15 a.m., only 15 minutes after the polls opened. Volunteers scrambled to provide the red, white and blue tags to the early voters.

“I hope you all voted,” an elderly man teased as a long line of children headed out on a field trip at Adams Elementary School in Davenport. “I hope you voted Democratic!”

A few blocks away, Betty Harrison, 74, cast her ballot at Trinity Lutheran Church.

She has been voting for 53 years and explained that her parents taught her the               importance of doing so in every election.

Harrison’s mother was 28 years old when women won the right to vote in 1919.

“I got used to voting by going with her,” Harrison said, noting that she voted at the former Grant Elementary School most of her life until the building was closed in 2002.

“But I’m getting used to this place now,” she said of the church. “I do like the machines.”

Harrison and others in Scott County used new voting machines that got a trial run in the June 6 primary.

Joe and Joanne Alexander worried about melted ice cream when they left the Trinity Lutheran precinct. They had stopped at the grocery store before reaching the polls.

“It went pretty smoothly today,” he said. “I had no problems.”

Fueled by a handful of hotly contested races, voter turnout was higher than usual at Rock Island County polls, leaving people waiting in lines for 30 minutes or more during high-traffic hours, said Susie Carpentier, chairwoman of the Rock Island County Republican Party.

A few minor problems with voting machines also contributed to voter waiting time, she said.

Carpentier said the call center she worked at fielded more telephone calls than usual. A majority of those came from people who were unsure of where to vote. Rock Island County changed its polling locations this year in an effort to move them out of schools because of safety concerns.

(Sheena Dooley contributed to this story.)

Deirdre Cox Baker can be contacted at (563) 383-2492 or dbaker@qctimes.com.