Photo by Deb Gau Election workers in Marshall’s Ward 2 helped voters get set up to participate in Tuesday’s primary election. The election was unusual in that Democratic and Republican presidential candidates were on separate ballots.

MARSHALL — Tuesday’s ballot for presidential candidates was crowded — for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor party, at least. But out of 15 options on the ballot, there were really only about five contenders for Lyon County voters.

According to unofficial vote totals for Lyon County, Joe Biden was area voters’ most popular choice, receiving a total of 616 votes. That total made up a little over 39% of the Democratic votes cast in Lyon County.

Tuesday’s presidential primary was Minnesota’s first since 1992, said Lyon County Auditor/Treasurer E.J. Moberg. Moberg said he wasn’t anticipating a high turnout in Lyon County – he predicted about 20% of Lyon County’s registered voters would participate in the primary.

Moberg’s prediction ended up being pretty close. When the unofficial vote totals were in, there were 2,528 votes cast, out of 13,544 registered voters. That came out to 19.4% of Lyon County voters.

Including Biden, there were five DFL presidential candidates who each earned more than 100 votes in Lyon County. Biden led the pack with 616 votes, and the next closest candidate was Bernie Sanders, at 388 votes. Minnesotan candidate Amy Klobuchar received 199 votes. Michael Bloomberg received 162 votes, and Elizabeth Warren received 150 votes.

The DFL primary ballot didn’t include a write-in option, but did allow voters to say they were uncommitted. Lyon County had a total of 17 “uncommitted” votes, according to unofficial vote totals.

A total of 935 Republican voters cast ballots for President Donald Trump in Lyon County, unofficial vote totals said. There were also 15 write-in votes.

Besides being Minnesota’s first presidential primary in 28 years, Tuesday’s vote was also unusual in other ways. For the first time, voters were offered a choice of separate ballots for Republican and DFL candidates, and the data of voters’ party preferences would be made available to each major political party in Minnesota.

While some Minnesotans raised privacy concerns about how their data could potentially be used, it didn’t seem to cause problems at local polls. Election judges at Marshall’s three voting precincts said they had only seen a few people come to the polls and then decide not to vote.

Not everything with Tuesday’s primary went smoothly in Minnesota. The Minnesota Secretary of State’s Office said its online poll finder tool temporarily lost service on Tuesday — and for a short time, the Secretary of State’s Office linked to a partisan website instead.

In a Tuesday press release, Secretary of State Steve Simon said the state poll finder tool was brought back into service.

“We have no evidence that Minnesota’s voting systems were hacked or otherwise interfered with in any way,” Simon said.

“Our policy in the event of technical issues is that voters are redirected to find their information via the designated backup, Google’s nonpartisan Voting Information Project,” Simon said. “In an urgent attempt to restore service, a staff person diverged from our emergency plan, and in a serious lapse of judgment, linked to a partisan website that contained polling place information.”

Simon said the Secretary of State’s Office corrected the link as soon as it was discovered. The link to the partisan website was active for about 17 minutes, he said.

Simon said he deeply regretted the error, and would be working with staff in the Secretary of State’s Office on Tuesday instead of attending events at the state Legislature.