Barry Stephenson vividly remembers the incredibly long line of voters who were waiting to cast their ballots at Hoover’s Hunter Street Baptist Church in 2020.

“That was a general election,” recalled Stephenson, chairman of the Jefferson County Board of Registrars.

The heavy turnout there prompted election officials to split the precinct that had been at Hunter Street in two with one at The Hoover Met and the other at the Finley Center. With the SEC Baseball Tournament again at The Met, those precincts made a guest appearance at Hunter Street today. But the incredibly long lines were nowhere to be found.

“They can definitely handle a primary,” Stephenson said of the recombined Hunter Street precinct. “For the runoff, we’re going to bounce back to The Hoover Met and the Family Center because the SEC Baseball Tournament will be over. But it can handle the crowd for today, and it has.”

During Tuesday’s committee meeting of the Jefferson County Commission, Sheila Tyson said she had fielded several calls about issues at precincts.

“It seemed like early this morning there was some confusion within some precincts in commission District 2 that they’re handing out possibly the wrong ballots,” Stephenson said. “This is Commissioner Tyson saying that, secondhand. We didn’t get a call.”

The board chairman said the concern involved House districts.

“Some of the precincts have more than one state House district in it,” he said. “You have to double check that (you’ve got) the correct ballot style you’re handing to the voter. She (Tyson) was getting reports that people, for instance, who lived in House District 55 were getting House District 60 precinct ballots, and then vice versa.”

Stephenson said his office had not received the calls about which Tyson spoke.

“This was coming to Commissioner Tyson,” he said. “I don’t doubt her; she’s really in touch with her district. But, whatever precinct it was, we sent someone out there to observe and to go over with the poll workers again to check the ballot receipt and give out the right ballot style. We haven’t heard from Commissioner Tyson since 8:30 or so this morning, so I’m guessing that got straightened out.”

Stephenson said issues could be traced to operator error related to technology.

“We have a new iPad stand and the whole thing has to be plugged in,” he said. “Evidently, in some of the precincts, the poll workers weren’t plugging everything in that should be. Once we figured that out, we didn’t really get any more calls about the iPads after 8:30 or 9 o’clock. That dropped off like a rock. I think that was an issue. They just didn’t have everything plugged in correctly.”

Later in the day, three polling places — at North Birmingham Recreation Center, North Birmingham Public Library and Bluff Park United Methodist Church — were kept open late because of computer issues and other delays in voting that arose during the day.

Wayne Rogers, the immediate past chairman of the Jefferson County Democratic Party, said 85,724 votes had been cast countywide as of 4 p.m.

“That’s 17.4% turnout so far,” he told BirminghamWatch. “We’re on track to exceed the 107,000 cast in the May 2022 primary if the pace holds. We’re getting just over 9,500 votes per hour but over 10,000 per hour this afternoon.”

Stephenson said the numbers supplied by Rogers, who is running as the Democratic nominee for Secretary of State, sound about right. “I hope we get to 25%. It really depends on … the absentee vote tabulates later tonight, but it’s probably going to be between 22% and 25% overall.”