Two primary voters cast their ballots at Christ the King Lutheran Church, Ward 3’s polling place Tuesday.

NEW ULM – With U.S. Senate and U.S. Representative nominations on the line, turnout from New Ulm citizens was small.

In Brown County, primary elections focused on nominations for one U.S. Senate seat and two U.S. House of Representatives seats. In the DFL primary, Amy Klobuchar was chosen by local voters with 669 votes, going up against minor competition. The closest DFL challenger was Steve Carlson with nine votes.

State wide GOP voters selected Royce White as the GOP Senate nominee, but in Brown County Joe Fraser received the most votes with 493 to White’s 370.

Minnesota U.S. Representative Districts 1 and 7 had GOP primaries, which incumbents Brad Finstad and Michelle Fischbach received the most votes with 1,312 and 213 votes respectively.

The DFL candidates for U.S. Rep. Districts 1 and 7 were unopposed in the primary. Rachel Bowman received 577 in Brown County for District 1. AJ Peters ran unopposed for the DFL District 7 nominee and received 65 votes.

The predominant realization amongst head judges for the four New Ulm wards was the low turnout they received.

This was felt most in Ward 2, where they received only 31 votes by 10 a.m. and 102 by 5 p.m. Ward 2 Head Judge Perry Bock said in his 40-plus years of election involvement, this is one of the lowest turnouts he has ever seen.

Bock said he believes plenty of people mainly want to get involved in the main elections, and don’t feel any urgency to vote in these primaries.

With three races on the Republican side and only one Democrat race, Bock said some people tried to vote Democrat for Senator, then Republican for one or both of the Representative races.

Ward 1 fared better, with 41 votes by 10:30 a.m. and 152 by 5 p.m. Ward 1 Head Judge Tamera Gramstad said she received a few comments asking why they had to vote separately now, instead of voting with the general election in November.

Without any local elections included, and given many of the races had solid incumbents, turnout was low in Ward 1 as well according to Gramstad.

Ward 3 had the best turnout of all four. They had 88 votes by 11 a.m. and 222 votes by 6 p.m. Ward 3 Head Judge Beth Zabel said with the lack of local races, the turnout was around what she was expecting. She said there were no spikes in activity, just a slow pace throughout the day.

“It’s been this nice little trickle,” Zabel said. “People trickling in all day. There’s a little rush at lunchtime and after dinner.”

Ward 4 had 82 votes by 11 a.m. and 186 by 5:30 p.m. Ward 4 Head Judge Bill Furth said they have around 2,000 registered voters in their ward. He hoped to get to 200 by closing time, getting around 10% participation. He said he figured they wouldn’t be busy, but it gave all the judges and set-up crew a warm-up before go time in November with the presidential election.

In conversations with others, Furth said many didn’t know a lot of the candidates on the ballot. As such, they didn’t feel comfortable voting when they weren’t knowledgable on the people running.