City Hall tallies up primary votes

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - All eyes are on the election returns now that the polls have closed in the 2012 primary.

In Bernalillo County the votes from the 69 voting centers are arriving at city hall to be tallied up.

As of 7 p.m. nearly 40,000 people voted in person Tuesday.

All of the votes are on computer memory cards that are coming here for county staff to process.

The results are shown on the board behind me as they calculated.

This year a new system was in place. Instead of voting at a specific precinct, people could vote at any voting center they wanted.

The clerks office says there were no major hang ups' Tuesday.

Since people could choose locations as they please, some got pretty busy.

At Paseo Del Norte and Wyoming there was a 40 minute wait to vote Tuesday evening.

It will also take a bit longer to calculate the ballots because the voting machines had to be programmed to account for any person from any precinct showing up.

Officials also say it will take a bit longer for the votes to come in because there are more voting machines at each location.

Those machines have to read larger voting combinations since several precincts are jammed into each voter center.

The country clerk says the preliminary outlook shows this election, including votes from Tuesday, absentee and early voting, had a 23 percent turnout.

Compared to the 2008 primary, it is down by three percent.