At the Red Lyon Tavern in downtown Lawrence, one TV screen showed a basketball blowout in progress. Other screens showed a dramatic power shift in politics, as Democrats grabbed control of the U.S. House of Representatives and key Kansas seats.

Lawrence resident Steve McArthur came to the bar for Kansas University basketball, but he ended up talking politics by night’s end.

“Once it turned into a blowout, the election was more interesting,” McArthur said as he stood with friends on the sidewalk outside the bar. The bar was full of cautiously optimistic Democrats, who had gone there for a gathering organized by the county’s Democratic Party.

Lawrence resident Jeff MacFarland said he thought the 2006 election would be remembered as a time when the country “got back to a normal balance of power, checks and balances.”

His brother, Mike, said he hoped it would be remembered as a time when “we avoided a power grab” in the U.S.

“I’m hoping that maybe, as a country, we’ll start moving back to the middle,” Mike MacFarland said.

Bad day for GOP

As results came in, Republicans grew resigned to their fate as the out-of-favor party – at least for this election.

“It could be an historical event,” said Richard Todd, the county’s Republican party chairman. “I’m hopeful that if the Democrats do take over one of the houses of Congress, that they don’t have it for 40 years. In this political time, I just don’t think that’s going to happen on either side.”

Todd said there were not any events organized by the Republican party Tuesday night in Douglas County because of a lack of countywide races. As he checked in on happenings at the county courthouse, he said he already was making plans for 2008.

“To me, if somebody knocks me down, I want to get right back up and go after them,” he said. “I started today talking to people about what we’re doing two years from now. It starts tomorrow, as far as I’m concerned. … We’re going to make sure that all the Democrats that won two years ago have tough races and make sure the ones that won today have races they have to pay attention to.”

Steve Lopes, a longtime Douglas County Democratic precinct committeeman, said, “This has been one of the best nights to be a Democrat in a long time.”

Asked what put him in such a good mood, he gave a one-word answer: “Boyda,” referring to Democrat Nancy Boyda’s win against incumbent U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun in Kansas’ Second District, just two years after Ryun handily defeated her.

On a day when it was warm enough to go to the polls in shorts, turnout was lower than expected: around 45 percent, according to Douglas County’s figures, compared with predictions of up to 55 percent.

Machines put to test

There seemed to be just a few problems with ballot-collecting machines, according to various reports from residents.

A bug crawled in a ballot scanner early in the day at the United Way Building, 2518 Ridge Court, causing the machine to go out of commission for a while.

An ljworld.com reader also pointed out a problem early in the day at the East Lawrence Recreation Center, 1245 E. 15th St., that arose when ballots weren’t being accepted into the scanner.

“The people who set the machine up did not lift the bar that blocks the entrance for the ballots,” said R. W. Eggert, who was working at the polling place.

He said about 30 ballots were put in a temporary holding place until the problem was fixed, and then they were counted.

Elections officials said there was a brief problem with a scanner Tuesday morning at The Windsor, 3220 Peterson, the polling place for Precinct 6.

“There was an issue, and we corrected it. But it was not a bug,” County Elections Deputy Keith Campbell said.

County Clerk Jamie Shew said he had not received any reports of polls not opening on time, which was an issue in a few locations during the August primary. Shew said he had all poll workers arrive at voting locations by 6 a.m. in order to give them plenty of time to set up voting equipment. This was the second election that Douglas County used electronic vote scanners at each polling place.

The Journal-World received an e-mail this morning from a voter who walked to his polling place at West Junior High but couldn’t find any place to vote.

The voter said he went home, then came back later and found an entrance to where he could vote at the school.

Shew said he did have his street signs that say “Vote” on them stolen in that area, so there was less than the normal signage.

“I can say with confidence that West Junior High was open,” Shew said. “Because we had some problems in August, that was a very big push on my part.”

At least two local voters – Marti Lucero, interviewed at Windsor Place, and Tina Darling, interviewed at the East Lawrence center – expressed relief during interviews that negative campaign ads had come to an end.

“It seems like it has been more cutthroat than usual,” Lucero said.