Clerk and Recorder Ginger Kunz had a hard time believing her eyes when she saw voter turnout in Jefferson County was only 69%.

“We were so busy,” she said. “I was thinking, ‘oh, my gosh, this is a great turnout. Then it’s all said and done and I was like, ‘69 percent?’ I swore we would have been closer to 80%, but I know that’s just tunnel vision since I’ve been hearing from 6,000 voters.”

Out of 9,479 registered voters in the county, only 6,532 submitted ballots, including the 140 provisional ballots that were determined Nov. 14.

It’s not at all unusual for a midterm...