Voter turnout brutal

Since there are no other candidates for the office, voters in the primary essentially decided who will succeed Joel Page, who’s been the county prosecutor for 32 years.

Other than the race for Lamoille County state’s attorney, not one office-seeker was eliminated in Tuesday’s voting.

With very little at stake, local residents voted in Tuesday’s primary much like voters throughout Vermont — hardly at all.

Roughly 3 percent of Stowe’s registered voters, 7 percent of Morristown’s and 4 percent of Waterbury’s cast ballots to determine who represents Vermont’s four political parties in the general election Nov. 4. Statewide, turnout was less than 10 percent.

Finnerty, a Huntington resident, bested Christopher Moll 299-170; Moll is an Essex resident who’s now a deputy prosecutor for Page.

There were 102 write-in votes for state’s attorney on the Republican primary ballot, and those names won’t be officially tallied until early next week, but Finnerty is “cautiously optimistic” he’ll be the only candidate listed on the November ballot.

Moll all but conceded, saying Wednesday that most of those write-ins probably went Finnerty’s way.

“I’m very gratified that the voters of Lamoille County voted for me,” Finnerty said, adding, “I did lose Belvidere.”

Barring a write-in campaign Nov. 4, Finnerty is all but assured the job, starting in 2015. Finnerty, now a Chittenden County deputy state’s attorney, worked as a lawyer in Stowe for four years in the early 1990s, so he knows the area.

“I look forward to reintegrating myself into the community,” he said.

Moll did not report any contributions or expenses for his campaign, his first run at elected office.

Finnerty reported $3,500 in contributions as of Aug. 18, including $2,000 he loaned to his campaign. One key donor — in name, if not in dollar amount — was Lamoille County Sheriff Roger Marcoux, who donated $200 to Finnerty’s campaign.

Finnerty didn’t say whether he will keep Moll on his staff.

Moll said he thinks the campaign was run cleanly, with no mud-slinging, and the decision about his employment status come 2015 is Finnerty’s to make.

“I don’t have a Plan B, and today is another day in court,” Moll said Wednesday morning.

Low turnout

In local legislative races, two Republican incumbents, Lamoille County Sen. Rich Westman, R-Cambridge, and state Rep. Heidi Scheuermann, R-Stowe, remain unopposed for November.

House Speaker Shap Smith, D-Morristown, is one of four candidates for two seats in the Lamoille-Washington House district. The others are Democrat Avram Patt of Worcester and Morristown Republicans Mickey Smith and Emily Lapan. Incumbent Democrat Peter Peltz of Woodbury decided not to run again.

In the two-seat Lamoille-2 House district, incumbent Democrats Linda Martin of Wolcott and Mark Woodward of Johnson will square off against Republicans Lucien Gravel of Wolcott and S. Christian Bouthillette of Johnson.

Incumbent Republican Bernard Juskiewicz of Cambridge has no opposition for the Lamoille-3 House seat.

Some countywide contests might have to wait a week before being solidified; the secretary of state’s office will not produce a tally of write-in votes until next week. All it takes in a county race is 50 write-ins to earn a spot on the Nov. 4 ballot.

On the primary ballot for county races: James R. Dean Mahoney of Hyde Park, Republican, for probate judge; Roger Marcoux of Morristown, a Republican, sheriff; Eben E. Merrill of Hyde Park, a Republican, high bailiff; and two assistant judge spots, Democrats Joel Page of Cambridge and Karen Bradley of Morristown.

At the top of the ticket, Vermont’s sole congressman, Peter Welch of Norwich, was unopposed in the Democratic primary. Three Republicans were running; Mark Donka of Hartford barely edged Donald W. Nolte of Derby and Donald Russell of Shelburne. Four minor-party candidates or independents will be on the November ballot.

Democratic Gov. Peter Shumlin of East Montpelier, seeking his third term, got only token opposition from H. Brooke Paige of Washington. The Republican nominee is Scott Milne of Pomfret, as a write-in campaign for Dan Feliciano, a Libertarian, fell well short of a serious challenge, and neither Emily Peyton of Putney or Steve Berry of Berlin got much support. Feliciano and three other minor-party or independent candidates will be on the November ballot.

Republican Phil Scott of Berlin, seeking his third term as lieutenant governor, had no challengers on the ballot; a write-in campaign by Progressive Dean Corren may have landed him the Democratic nomination.

Other Democratic incumbents also nominated: Attorney General William Sorrell of Burlington, Treasurer Beth Pearce of Barre City, Secretary of State Jim Condos of Montpelier, and state Auditor Doug Hoffer of Burlington. None faces a serious challenge in November.

Low turnout, high cost

Most of the primary election ballots allotted to Stowe are now scrap paper, including all the ballots for the Progressive and Liberty Union parties.

In Stowe, 87 voters filled out Democratic ballots and 39 voted in the Republican primary, a turnout of 3 percent.

Town Clerk Allison Kaiser thinks that’s a shame, considering the expense that goes into the primary elections.

“It’s a very expensive election,” she said. This year, every primary voter received four ballots — Republican, Democratic, Progressive and Liberty Union. Each voters chose one to fill out, and the other three were recycled. And, since turnout was so low, most ballots were never handed out.

Kaiser said the Vermont Secretary of State’s Office spends almost a half-million dollars on the primary election, and towns have their own costs, too: Kaiser said it cost $1,700 to program the vote-counting machine. For the 126 voters who cast primary ballots in Stowe, it cost the town about $13.50 each to program a machine to count their votes.

On the bright side, Kaiser sometimes takes old, unused ballots, bound into handy notepads, and donates them to groups around town.

— Tommy Gardner