Voter Turnout Slow but Steady in Farmington, Hills

Outside of Our Lady of Sorrows, the polling location for Precinct 6 in Farmington, a neat row of campaign signs were planted in a grassy parking lot island, endorsing this candidate and that, and urging voters to vote to support the library millage renewal.

They seemed to be waiting for a crowd of voters. The crowd never materialized, although city clerks in both Farmington and Farmington Hills said voter turnout was higher than usual for a local election.

Just before 5 p.m., workers had counted a total of 272 ballots, 172 of them absentee, said poll worker Bonnie Haun.

So when a lone voter arrived, she was able to walk right past the "line starts here" sign, and moments later emerged, having had her say in the local election.

She said she is a teacher in the Farmington Public Schools (FPS) district, and didn't want to be identified. She wasn't alone in that request, as no voters asked outside the polls to talk about Election Day wanted their names reported, if they were willing to take a moment to talk at all.

"I'm very interested in the school board election," the FPS employee said. "That's why I came out to vote. It's very important to me."

City of Farmington council candidate Kevin Giannini didn't mind taking a few minutes to chat. He'd been talking to voters all day.

A newcomer to city politics, he said he got involved out of a sense of civic duty.

He said besides the city council, the board of education election is important to him because he has two young children who are students in Farmington Schools. He heard the same from other voters he'd talked to most of the day.

Though voters had differing views on candidates and millage questions, they seemed to have one thing in common: They weren't particularly chatty.

Said Giannini: "They all seemed to have a good idea of how they wanted to vote, and wanted to just get in, do their business, and get out."

Downtown in Farmington, poll worker Sharon Bernath reported at 5 p.m., the height of the after-work flock, that voters had trickled in, "slow and steady all day."

But farther north, at 5:45 p.m., poll workers at Warner Upper Elementary School in Farmington Hills said that was the first time all day anyone had to stand in line. It was a short line, just five voters, but it was a line all the same.

Outside, voters said that they were most interested in the public safety and library millages.

But board of education candidate Irving Ginsberg begged to differ. He'd been talking to voters all day, and said that most were very concerned about the race in which he was running.

"Up here, and near the sites where elementary schools were closed, people are not happy about that decision," he said. Practically across the street from the closed Eagle Elementary, which the district recently agreed to sell to the Islamic Cultural Association, Ginsberg said that Precinct 1 voters at Warner were livid about the way the sale of the school was "done in secret."

That, he said, was the reason he got on the ballot. Then he also became concerned with what he said is the "declining performance of the schools."