Presidential Primary: As state goes, so does Carlton County

Carlton County went big for Democratic candidate Joe Biden on the DFL side, and President Trump on the Republican side in Tuesday's presidential primary election. The results here reflected results across Minnesota.

With Trump the only name on the ballot for the Republican Party, he received 97.8 percent of the votes cast by Republicans.

On the Democratic ballot, the voting results were more varied, but also quite decisive. Joe Biden got a total of 2,057 votes (45.2 percent) in Carlton County, while Bernie Sanders garnered 1,134 votes (25 percent). The vote tallied dropped off substantially after that, with Michael Bloomberg getting 516 votes (11.3 percent) and Elizabeth Warren 329 (7.2 percent). Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar, who had dropped out of the race Monday, got more votes than Warren at 389 (8.5 percent).

Klobuchar's vote totals more than doubled in Carlton County when the mail-in ballots were added to the tally - from 172 to 389 - because those votes were cast before Klobuchar dropped out of the race.

Biden won in Minnesota with 39 percent of the vote and ended up winning in 10 of the 14 Super Tuesday primaries.

Sanders captured 30 percent of the Minnesota vote while Warren had 15 percent. But Sanders won in California, which had the lion share of delgates up for grabs Tuesday.

The Biden surge and Bloomberg's poor showing across the country led to the former New York City mayor dropping out of the Democratic race Wednesday and backing Biden.

There have been a lot of changes in the past few months since the Democractic ballot was printed. Although 15 names and one slot for "uncommitted" were listed on the DFL ballot for Minnesota, there were only five actual DFL candidates left in the race by Tuesday morning. But election judges couldn't advise voters on who remained active in the race: that was up to the voter to discern. This was also the first time Minnesota voters had to check a box next to their signature to indicate which party ballot they would like to receive, which judges in Carlton County covered up with brightly colored easy-peel crafting tape before allowing the next person to vote - for privacy reasons.

A total of 5,706 Carlton County residents voted in Tuesday's primary. Approximately 1,367 of those votes were mail or absentee ballots. With 20,769 registered voters, that means about 27.5 percent of registered voters voted on or before Tuesday.

Carlton County auditor Kathy Kortuem said it's hard to compare with past presidential primaries because the last one was in 1992, but she said the state turnout rate at the last one was about 12 percent.

On Wednesday, after a late night getting all the results added up and verified, Korteum gave a "qualified yes" to the question of whether or not she was happy with how the election went.

Most importantly, she said, the results here are very accurate, even if they took a bit longer than usual to put together. Although all the precincts had reported to the courthouse by 10 p.m., it was close to 10:45 p.m. before the first results for Carlton County appeared on the Secretary of State website.

It was Kortuem's first election since taking over as county auditor, and the first election following the retirement of some key office staff, including longtime auditor Paul Gassert.

"It was a very new experience for almost all of us," Kortuem said. "But I think we not only worked out way through this but we have a lot more sturdiness in our process, more people that have greater understanding of more pieces. I am happy with the direction we're in and where we're at."

They will be debriefing and putting all their knowledge to practice again in the next primary on Aug. 11, and again in the General Election Nov. 3.

"We'll be so practiced by then," she said with a chuckle. "That's my theory."