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Week In Pictures
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Kentucky voters, especially Democrats, turned out in record numbers Tuesday.
With 99.2 percent of precincts reporting, tallies indicated that 43 percent of Kentucky's registered Democrats voted in Tuesday's primary.
The Republican showing was more modest, with 18.9 percent going to the polls.
The overall voter turnout of 32 percent topped the previous record of 26.5 percent in 1992.
That year, 31 percent of the state's Democrats voted in the presidential primary. Just 16 percent voted in the 2004 presidential primary.
Secretary of State Trey Grayson had predicted that 25 to 30 percent of eligible voters would cast a ballot.
Throughout the day, the secretary of state's office was inundated with telephone calls about election illegalities, said Les Fugate, deputy assistant secretary of state.
A verbal skirmish between supporters of Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton broke out at a precinct in Christian County.
"We were told they were exit pollers," he said.
Precinct workers told the people to either behave or leave, he said. "They decided to behave themselves."
The biggest problem of the day was electioneering within 300 feet of a polling place, which is illegal. But precinct workers were successful in stopping illegal electioneering, he said.
Poll worker Elizabeth Taylor of Lexington started her day Tuesday a little nervous, but with few problems.
"I've had plenty of coffee, and I'm wide awake and ready to go," said Taylor, 43, a first-time poll clerk who worked at The Rock United Methodist Church on North Limestone.
Taylor said she stayed up until 1 a.m. reading voting guidelines, and she got only about three hours of sleep. But Taylor said working at the polls, which her mother did for about 15 years before she died five years ago, is an important job.
"She had talked to me about doing it," Taylor said of her mother, Helen Dreux. "I wanted to do my part -- my civic duty."
Taylor said the only problems she'd experienced Tuesday morning were voters at the wrong precinct and independent voters who did not have anyone on the ballot in that district.
Shavon Herring, 22, who voted at The Rock church, said she voted for Barack Obama for president because she thinks he understands issues facing blacks.
Kitty Ware, election coordinator in the Fayette County Clerk's office, said that sheriff's deputies had to go to voting locations three times to stop people from electioneering too close to the polls. Deputies went to Jessie Clark Middle School twice and Anchor Baptist Church once because of illegal electioneering reports, she said.
A deputy sheriff also had to visit Meadowthorpe Elementary School, where construction crews were working at the precinct entrance, Ware said.
"The biggest problem was just irate voters who were not allowed to vote in the party they wanted to," she said.
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