If only Stew Leonard’s had voting booths.
Credited with having the highest voter turnout in Connecticut for last week’s GOP primary for governor — reported to be 78.8 percent by the secretary of the state’s office — Norwalk admits it’s too good to be true.
“Typo,” Karen Doyle Lyons, the city’s Republican registrar of voters, told Hearst Connecticut Media Tuesday.
Lyons said that turnout for the primary, won by the GOP’s endorsed candidate, Tom Foley, over State Senate Minority Leader John McKinney, was 18 percent.
That’s more in line with anemic turnout figures reported statewide, which averaged 21 percent, according to state election officials.
Just to put the turnout in perspective, 75 percent of registered Norwalk voters cast ballots in the 2008 presidential election — the emphasis goes on presidential election. The presidential election of 2000 drew 79 percent of voters, according to Lyons, who said 83 percent of Norwalkers voted in the 1992 general election for president.
The small town of Chaplin in the Quiet Corner, population 2,305, had the highest turnout for the primary at 54.4 percent, followed by North Canaan (52.30 percent), Cornwall (47.90 percent)
and Canaan (44.60 percent).
Beacon Falls reported the lowest turnout at 4 percent, followed by Stratford (5.30 percent), Portland (8.50 percent), New Fairfield (10.30 percent) and Ridgefield (10.50 percent), according to state election officials.