Shorewood Goes to the Polls

For the big elections she's worked, Kay Corcoran says nearly the whole town turns up.

"Everybody comes out," said Corcoran, who with her husband, Larry Corcoran, has served as an election judge in Shorewood for the past five years.

"Not everybody," Kay Corcoran conceded, "but about three-quarters of the people."

Not everybody came out this Election Day. Not even three-quarters of the people. Not even close.

By 1 p.m. only 55 voters cast ballots at the polling place in that the Corcorans were working alongside fellow election judges Shahira Samrah and R.J. Budde.

With only four candidates going for , a and another for the , along with an absence of state or local races, a relatively stable local economy and peaceable town politics, the campaign season was quiet in Shorewood this time around.

And that meant a sleepy day at the polls, which made things even more difficult for Budde, a Minooka High School senior who was working his first election after being inspired by a government teacher.

"I woke up at four o'clock in the morning," said Budde, who generally rises about four hours later than that to get to school.

Samrah was serving as an election judge for the second time.

"I find it kind of interesting," she said. "You meet some new people."

The Shorewood election judges, like all election judges in Will County, were schooled in their job by County Clerk Nancy Voots.

"She does a great job," Kay Corcoran said of the county clerk. "She keeps everybody in line, everybody up to date."

Over at the Shorewood-Troy Public Library, which was another of Troy Township's polling places, two candidates for the fire protection district board, Robert Schwartz and John Theobald, were busy relocating a campaign sign.

Theobald said the feedback he has received from the public so far on Election Day has been "positive, I guess."

Schwartz, Theobald and three others are running as a unified ticket for the five fire trustee seats against lone candidate Bob Robinson.

As they worked to install their sign outside the library, Schwartz, whose wife Celine Schwartz is running to keep her seat on the village board, joked that they "might as well join the sign parade."