By Patrick Crowley
The Cincinnati Enquirer

BRACHT - It was slow at the KY Pub on Tuesday morning, with no customers and few voters.

On election days, the bar on Dixie Highway in far southern Kenton County becomes a precinct for 815 registered voters. And because state law prevents alcohol from being served at precincts, the taps are shut off and the booze is bottled up from 6 a.m. to 6 p.m. while the polls are open.

Dude Simpson, who lives across the street from the pub, admits he doesn't like voting in a saloon, even one that is dry on Election Day.

"My wife, Barbara, is a Baptist and won't vote at all because she won't go into a saloon," said Simpson, 74, a farmer. "I kind of resent that I have to go into a saloon to vote. It does bother me. But I haven't missed voting since we moved here in 1948, and I'm not going to stop now just because it's in a saloon."

Few of the more than 26,000 Kenton County residents eligible to vote in Tuesday's special state Senate election displayed the same kind of dedication to the voting process as Simpson.

As of about 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, only 18 voters had shown up in Bracht to cast ballots in the election between Republican Damon Thayer and Democrat Charles Wells, two candidates from Scott County vying to fill a Senate seat in a new 17th legislative district that covers 25 southern Kenton County precincts as well as all of Grant, Owen and Scott counties.

"We'd probably have more people if we were selling drinks," joked precinct worker Judy Readnour. "Not enough people knew about this election, so they just aren't coming out."

Precinct workers across the southern half of the county were telling similar tales of low turnout Tuesday as the mix of a January election, two candidates from outside the area and a cold day kept voters away in droves.

"It's an odd election," said Naomi Bowen, one of four people staffing the precinct at the Nicholson Christian Church South of Independence, where by late morning 53 of the precinct's 1,056 voters had stopped to cast ballots. "Who ever votes in January?"

Apparently, not many people in and around Piner, another southern Kenton County community. There, the polling place is in the Piner-Fiskburg Volunteer Fire Department's cozy firehouse.

In November, when a U.S. Senate and hotly contested county courthouse races were on the ballot, 280 of the precinct's 748 registered voters cast ballots. By late morning Tuesday, just 43 votes had been cast.

"Normally at this time on an Election Day, we'd have twice as many voters, if not more," said precinct worker Faye Bray.

Piner resident Dennis Glackson had just cast his vote - though he wouldn't say for whom - and chided those who stayed home Tuesday.

"I tell people that don't, (that) when it comes to voting, don't worry about political parties, vote for the best person," said Glackson, a member of the volunteer fire department. "That's what I did in the (county) judge-executive race. I'm a Democrat, but I voted for (Republican incumbent) Dick Murgatroyd because as judge-executive he has done more for the southern end of the county than any judge I can remember."

Kenton County Clerk Bill Aylor had predicted turnout of about 10 percent for the race, but he lowered that estimate Tuesday afternoon.

"If we make it to 10 percent, I'll be surprised," Aylor said.

The large Independence No. 10 Precinct at the city's new Madison Pike firehouse was on pace to do about 10 percent. Just before noon, 56 voters had turned out in a precinct were 1,097 are registered to vote, according to poll worker Rosan Lorentz.

Lorentz said what turnout there was Tuesday may have been driven by the frequent mailings and heavy phone calling done by the candidates in the final days of the campaign. "I know people who got four pieces of mail and eight or nine phone calls over the weekend," she said. "But even with all that, we're slow."

But Nicholson poll worker Bud Arnold guessed the heavy weekend phone calling kept some voters away.

"People were sick of getting phone calls," Arnold said. "I think it turned people off and they decided to stay home and not vote at all."

The election was held in late January to fill a seat that lawmakers created last year after receiving updated 2000 population figures from the U.S. Census Bureau. Voting could have been held earlier, but Sen. Daniel Mongiardo, an eastern Kentucky Democrat forced into the seat because of redistricting, stepped down only in late November - after winning another Senate seat in his native Perry County.

The odd circumstances of the new district contributed to the low turnout, said Carol Crout, who was working the polls with Ruth Wesley at a precinct at the Erlanger Fire Department on Narrows Road, where 909 voters are registered but only 19 had voted shortly after noon.

"People are confused," Crout said. "They don't know who is running, they don't know if they are supposed to vote."

E-mail pcrowley@enquirer.com