Southeast Idaho experienced record turnout for a school district levy election Tuesday, continuing a trend of strong voter participation from a turbulent presidential election that drew record numbers to polling places last November.

Bannock County Elections Director Julie Hancock said before the polls closed Tuesday that approximately 1,600 people had voted early for this election, more than half of the total number of people who cast ballots in the 2019 March election.

“I don’t know what the driving force for this is, but I believe it’s because people are paying attention and want to participate more in the process,” Hancock said. “The high turnout in Bannock County could be related to the recall elections or it could be the supplemental levy and people having issues with local taxes.”

With 100 percent of the precincts counted in Bannock County, 6,547 ballots were cast out of a total of 45,182 registered voters, marking nearly a 14.5 percent turnout. For comparison, about 3,100 people cast ballots in the same local school levy election in 2019 out of 36,733 registered voters, a turnout of 8.47 percent.

Turnout was also strong in Power County, according to Power County Clerk Sharee Sprague. As of 7 p.m. Tuesday, an hour before polls closed, 17 percent of registered voters in Power County had cast a ballot, or 575 of the 3,388 registered voters in the county.

In 2019, a total of 456 ballots were cast out of 2,157 registered voters, a turnout of about 21 percent.

By the time polls closed Tuesday night, a total number of 614 people cast ballots in Power county out of 3,388 registered voters, a turnout of 18 percent.

Power County experienced a decrease in early voting, however, with about 20 fewer people voting early this election in comparison to the same local levy election there in 2019.

Additionally, Sprague said this was the first election in which electronic poll books were deployed, a process she said was implemented seamlessly after hosting a training seminar on the use of the devices last week.