Voter turnout near 80 percent in Sonoma County

Sonoma County voters turned out in big numbers Tuesday, many of them inspired to join a wave of opposition to Republican President Donald Trump that swept away Republican control of the House of Representatives.

At the county’s main elections office in Santa Rosa, people waited in long lines to register to vote and cast provisional ballots, a tedious process that required a half-hour voter verification process, said Bill Rousseau, the county’s clerk-recorder-assessor and elections chief.

“It’s been a high-energy day today,” Rousseau said Tuesday evening, about 90 minutes before polls closed. “It’s been crazy all day.”

Rousseau predicted voter turnout out among the county’s 273,860 registered voters would reach as high as 80 percent, possibly more, given the excitement and the number of people registering to vote at the last minute.

“It’s a solid 80 percent, but I’m hoping for higher,” he said. “We’re going to be definitely higher than we were four years ago when we saw a 60 percent turnout.”

Midterm elections, held every four years, usually draw fewer voters than presidential elections. Some first-time voters said they were energized by friends and family and ?celebrities on social media.

“Twitter was popping with all the famous people,” said Courtney McIntosh, 18, who cast her ballot for the first time Tuesday. McIntosh, a Sonoma State University business major, waited on the steps of the main elections office for her name to be called out so she could receive her provisional ballot.

Carolina Sandoval, 18, a friend of McIntosh and also a first-time voter, said she’s never seen so much elections-related activity on Snapchat, Instagram or Twitter. Sandoval said the elections buzz on social media motivated her to vote.

But the biology major said she also wanted to cast votes for candidates for state and national offices who were pro-immigration and supported undocumented students known as Dreamers.

Elections officials said about 900 poll workers were dispatched to 185 voting places throughout the county. But three-quarters of county voters will have already mailed in their ballots, or at least they should have, he said.

Many were opposed to the policies and political tone in Washington under the Trump administration.

In Petaluma, business owner Victoria Miranda Denning, 67, said she was compelled to vote for Democrats this year to repudiate Trump and other Republicans. “I think this country as a whole needs change,” Denning said. “I’ve voted for Republicans in the past but I felt like I had to vote for Democrats this time.”

Staff Writer Randi Rossmann contributed to this story.