Heights More Than Doubled Average Voter Turnout

All over South Suburban Cook County we've heard stories of low voter-turnout rates. The Cook County Clerk's office is reporting that only 16 percent of registered voters in the south suburbs actually cast their ballots.

Numbers in Chicago Heights show something definitively different.

The Heights got more than 37 percent of registered voters to visit the polls, more than doubling the Southland average.

Before the election, Clerk's office representative Courtney Greve predicted a higher than average turnout.

"Turnout is typically greater in areas with contested races," Greve said last week. "So we expect that to hold true with Chicago Heights."

The voting site with the biggest percentage of cast ballots was Precinct 63, which was St. Paul's Lutheran Church. Out of 896 voters registered at the precinct, 500 showed up to do their civic duty, the most at any site in the Heights.

St. Paul's was one of just six precincts mayoral candidate Joe Faso won over David Gonzalez, who took the other 18 precincts and won the election.

Both candidates offered rides to voters who could not get to the polls on their own, which may have had an effect on voter turnout.

While the overall turnout in the south suburbs was 16 percent, no single precinct in Chicago Heights had less than 20 percent of its registered voters show up.