When Fairdale Elementary School was demolished, some thought it might damage the voter turnout from that former precinct.

"We thought, 'Maybe it would discourage them,'" Barbara Derby, who headed their replacement precinct, said.

But around 4:45 p.m., the number of voters surged, pushing the little "number of votes" count past 300 and beyond. By 5:35 p.m., 329 votes for a non-presidential primary, traditionally the one with the lowest turnout, had been tabulated at Sagewood Elementary School.

Marcia Walker, in charge of the Grant Elementary School precinct, said she directed several wayward Fairdale Elementary voters toward Sagewood. At her polling place, 261 people had voted as of 5:13 Tuesday afternoon. She said she was "absolutely thrilled" that they were going to hit 25 percent of their possible turnout - there are 1,147 people registered in the district - but had hoped for the elusive 33 1/3 percent.

"It's a little bit less than presidential primary," Walker said.

And, as Derby added, there weren't too many hotly contested inner-party races.

At the County Clerk's office, the feeling was that voter turnout was on par with past non-presidential primaries. On Aug. 18, 1998, 14,780 total votes were counted. On Aug. 20, 2002, there were 15,826.

Inside the Manor Heights Elementary School gymnasium, lunchtime voters trickled in one at a time, filling at most four of the 12 available voting booths. The school on East 15th Street usually gets an influx of voters in the morning, before work, said the volunteer in charge there. But today, that usual early morning push never happened.

"We should have at least 500," Mary Cliner said at 12:08 p.m. Tuesday, when only 212 votes, not counting absentee dropoffs, had been entered into the system.

Weather typically plays a factor in voter numbers, but Tuesday's clear skies and hot temperatures weren't the kind of conditions that traditionally have been said to keep the public inside.

Cliner said that Manor Heights territory is traditionally rife with voters. They pull 1,100 voters during general elections, Cliner said. Jane Sizemore, a fellow volunteer, said people probably feel like they will still have a final say come November. But some races, including that for Secretary of State, only involve one party's candidates and will be sewn up in August.

"This is just as important," Sizemore said of the primary vote.

At Kelly Walsh High School, 163 people had voted as of 12:45 p.m.Volunteers there said that number wasn't far off from the standard primary turnout, though they didn't have any numbers to compare it with.

Bill Miller, one of the volunteers at Kelly Walsh, said that from the morning through lunchtime there had been no lulls, but no lines either. In general and primary elections past, he usually saw a line at the door before voting began at 7 a.m. On Tuesday, only three people greeted him in the morning.