Voters in Clear Lake were lined up outside City Hall before polls even opened and they didn’t stop coming until the polls closed. Head Election Judge Kari Mechtel said there wasn’t a time during the entire day when there wasn’t at least one person voting, and believed it was even busier than it was during the Obama election.

 

The day wasn’t all smooth sailing, however. With people lined up waiting to vote that morning, the voting machine started spitting ballots back out instead of accepting them. 

 

At 7:20 a.m. Mechtel received a call from Sherburne County instructing them to pull all the Sharpies being used to mark ballots and replace them with pens. The Sharpies were bleeding through the ballots, making it difficult for the machine to distinguish the votes.

 

Two election judges made duplicates of the ballots that had been rejected. 

 

At the end of the day, Clear Lake residents had elected four members to their city council. Tim Goenner, who was running unopposed, was re-elected mayor, and  Sandra Paige, who was also running unopposed, was elected to fill the two-year special council position. Incumbent Bob Arnold and newcomer Karen White were elected to the two open four-year council positions.