Voters heavily engaged in midterm election
Nov. 9—Bruce Frey said he always shows up at election time.
"Every chance I get," said the 73-year-old St. Peter man. "I listen to my mom, who said, 'You get a chance to vote, you vote.' I've never missed one."
Frey's attitude was widely shared in the 2022 midterm elections in Minnesota.
Turnout locally wasn't quite as strong as in 2018, when the election was seen as something of a referendum on then-President Donald Trump midway through his term. But voters showed up Tuesday, or during early voting, in numbers that easily exceeded non-presidential elections in 2014 and 2010.
Statewide, 2,510,070 Minnesotans cast a ballot in the gubernatorial race won by Democratic Gov. Tim Walz. Secretary of State Steve Simon hadn't issued an estimate of the voter turnout as of Wednesday afternoon, but that figure would appear to put the percentage of eligible voters participating in 2022 above 60%.
In 2018, the tally in the governor's race was 2,587,287. As recently as 2014, fewer than 2 million people voted for governor. The official statewide turnout statistics for those years was 64.25% and 50.5%. In the 2020 presidential election, by contrast, nearly 3.3 million Minnesotans participated — 79.96% of eligible voters.
In Blue Earth County, the total votes cast in this year's election was 26,510 compared to 28,135 in 2018 and 20,021 in 2014.
It was a similar trend in Nicollet County. Looking at the governor's race, 15,311 county residents cast a ballot, which was down just 422 from the 2018 race and nearly 4,000 higher than in 2014.
A sampling of voters at the St. Peter Community Center showed some were motivated by dissatisfaction with the economy, particularly the pain of inflation running at the highest levels in four decades. But others were focused on the Supreme Court's overturning of Roe v. Wade and the potential that it would lead to restrictions on abortion and the loss of other rights.
And people were worried about the state of American democracy. That group included Frey, a Navy veteran who served in Vietnam and was remembering Tuesday his long-ago pledge to protect and preserve the Constitution.
"I took the same oath those ding-a-lings in Washington took and I stand by it," he said.
Watching voters stream in and out of the St. Peter Community Center Tuesday afternoon boosted Frey's mood.
"I'm amazed. I'm glad to see it," he said. "I'm just hoping that some of the younger people who really believe in democracy are out voting. We could lose it all."
Had Frey arrived a few minutes earlier, he would have passed more than a few of those younger people as they donned their "I voted" stickers.
Amberlina Brack, 36, said she always votes.
"I am a firm believer in elections," Brack said as she left her St. Peter polling place.
Michael Strode, of St. Peter, has strong opinions on a variety of issues, particularly those at the federal level.
"There's a lot of issues I'd like them to tackle like reasonable, responsible adults," Strode said.
While the 33-year-old machine operator said he has little faith that's going to happen, voting makes him feel less powerless.
"It's pretty much the only way I can make a difference in the way I'm governed," Strode said.
