If you scored an "I Voted" sticker on Tuesday, keep it as a rare collector's item.

Less than 10 percent of registered voters turned out across the valley to narrow the field in the municipal primary elections. Twelve Utah County cities held primaries Tuesday. Eleven of those cities had three City Council seats on the primary ballots. Mapleton voters were only deciding who would advance in the race for mayor, and Eagle Mountain, in addition to the council seats, voted on mayoral candidates.

"People just don't understand that these are the people who make important local decisions," said Sandy Hoffmann, election coordinator for Utah County.

People in some cities understood perhaps better than in others.

The high water marks were Elk Ridge at 18 percent and Mapleton at 24 percent. Mapleton probably scored high as one of only two cities in the county with a mayoral race. Results for the other, Eagle Mountain, weren't available at press time.

The low water marks were Provo, Springville and Pleasant Grove.

"The candidates haven't done a whole lot of advertising," said Springville city recorder Venla Gubler, where just 8.7 percent of voters turned out."People didn't even know there was going to be a primary."

Provo

Provo residents reside at the bottom of the barrel with 6.8 percent.

In that city, incumbents held the line as Midge Johnson, Barbara Sandstrom and Steve Turley will all be on the ballot in November. Their opponents will be Melanie McCoard, Sherrie Hall Everett and Coy Porter, respectively.

Everett, the Lakeview North Neighborhood chairwoman, said Provo's west side is facing myriad issues.

"That's where most of the development pressure is going," she said.

Interstate 15 frontage roads, the new Lakeview Elementary and a desperate need for services will need to be addressed, she said.

The Porter/Turley race will likely be a good one. Porter is a former fire chief, and incumbents have a hard time sticking around in Provo.

"Incumbents in a citywide race are few and far between," Turley said.

But he says he does have a message and could spend $25,000-$30,000 getting that message out.

"The city race never varies from just a few percent," he said. "We have every intention on widening that gap."

Eagle Mountain

Twenty-one percent of registered voters turned out for Eagle Mountain's primary election on Tuesday.

It was only the fourth primary election held in the city, said city recorder Gina Peterson, but the large turnout was not a record. At the first primary election held in 1997, with 111 registered voters, turnout was 95 percent.

With 5,553 registered voters in the city, 1,191 voted on Tuesday, Peterson said.

Supporters of candidates were active throughout the day. Dozens stood outside City Hall and Pony Express Elementary School, where voting took place, and also at the junction of Ranches Parkway and State Road 73, dancing and waving signs to encourage voter turnout.

Four candidates, Robert DeKorver, Linn Strouse, Richard Culbertson and Kenneth Hixson, had banded together running on a common platform under the motto "Keeping the Promise." Of the four, three made it to the general election. Hixson came in seventh in the race and won't advance.

The four had challenged the recent loss of four planned golf courses in the city center and said growth must be slowed in order to avoid outpacing infrastructure. They also decried recent forced water restrictions after a city well failed, saying a contingency plan should have been in place.

They also said they wanted to create a citizens advisory board with authority equal to the City Council "to provide complete perspective," according a campaign advertisement for the four.

Mapleton

A marital connection may have generated more interest in the primary election in Mapleton. Mayor Jim Brady isn't running for re-election -- his wife, Laurel, is looking to replace him.

Laurel Brady and Ann Tolley garnered enough votes Tuesday night to be on the ballot in November.

Brady had only 55 more votes than Tolley, who is currently serving on the City Council.

Stan Sorensen will not be moving on to the general election. Sorensen also lost the mayoral race against Dean Allan in 2005. When Allan subsequently resigned because of health problems, then-City Councilman Jim Brady took his place.

Camille Brown, Mapleton city recorder, said the 23.82 percent voter turnout for the primaries is a much better number than previous elections.

Laurel Brady said she is close friends with Tolley and will continue to be so regardless of the eventual result of the elections. Tolley could not be reached Tuesday night for comment.

Lehi

Only three votes separated the candidates in first and second place in Lehi. Incumbent Mark Johnson received 927 votes, while Johnny Revill (also an incumbent) had 924 votes. More votes separated the sixth-place candidate from seventh-place -- 128 votes.

There was some voting confusion in Lehi. Election judges bore the brunt of voter frustration when some residents had to go to three different polling sites to find out where to vote. Some gave up in frustration.

"People were just in arms," said Kim Powell, an election judge. "One of the other things that happened -- one of the districts was put in wrong online."

The lack of signs marking the polls for voters was one problem cited by election judges, another was using the Xango campus as a polling place. There were four buildings, with none of them marked, according to Heather Groom, election judge at Eaglecrest Elementary.

"It was very confusing," she said. "People went to the (IMAX) theater because it has 'Xango' on the outside."

Groom said there was an 80-year-old couple with a walker who first went to the Legacy Center to vote and were told to go to Eaglecrest Elementary School, which was another polling site in north Lehi.

"They came here and I had to send them out to Xango," she said. "It was heartbreaking."

"I'm actually puzzled as to what to do," said city administrator Jamie Davidson. "You try to bring it closer to the people and encourage voter turnout. There are some who prefer it at the Legacy Center and would rather go there.

"Even if we had a 25 percent turnout, you'd have 4,000 people at the Legacy Center and we just felt that would be too much in one location."

Elsewhere in Utah County

In Highland, about 8.5 percent of registered voters made it to the polls, advancing six candidates to the general election. Turnout in Pleasant Grove was a little lower than Highland -- 7.5 percent. The highest vote-getter received 615 votes (Bruce Call), the lowest vote getter got 119 votes (Peter Bowen).

It was a provisional ballot's paradise in Payson during the primary. City recorder Jeanette Curtis said voter lists in some voting precincts were incorrect, which meant that some people were listed in the wrong precinct and had to fill out provisional ballots. Provisional and absentee ballots have not been counted.

Elk Ridge had its 225 ballots counted quickly, with results in by 9:30 p.m.

Draper, like other cities, will have to count provisional and absentee ballots before the numbers will be finalized. But it will also have to add in mail-in ballots, which were sent to all the city's residents who live in Utah County.

Provisional ballots could decide who's on the ballot in Spanish Fork on Election Day. There were 99 provisional ballots cast, and there's only a 38-vote difference between the sixth- and seventh-place candidates. Six candidates will advance from the primary. The provisional ballots will be counted before Tuesday.

Orem results were trickling in through the night, with 100 percent of the precincts reporting by 11 p.m. There were 127 votes separating six-place candidate Tom Fifita Sitake from seventh-place candidate Gary A. Wise. The top six candidates move on to the general election.

Caleb Warnock, Joe Pyrah, Janice Peterson, Cathy Allred and Brittani Lusk contributed to this story.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page A1.