Students who missed their opportunity to vote early on Duke’s campus journeyed through the cold for one last chance to cast their ballots Tuesday night.
The 9,174 early ballots cast at Duke’s on-campus site did not include all eligible Duke students. Cars driven by members of Duke Democrats and a Charlene’s Safe Ride van ferried remaining voters to the polls from campus throughout Election Day. Student voters joined other Durham residents in braving a chilly November day to play their part in the electoral process.
Those living on West and Central Campuses headed to the voting site at W. I. Patterson Recreation Center, a cozy room ringed by hand-colored alphabet drawings and a blue and yellow construction paper welcome sign. Even with slightly more than an hour left, the after-work voting crowd filled the line out to the doors. A total of 483 votes were cast at the precinct throughout the day.
Sophomore Ahmed Suliman voted early, but he was at the site bringing a third round of friends to the polls.
“It’s a civil right, so [people] need to take advantage of that,” he said. “A lot of students are like, ‘Oh I’m busy with a final. Oh I’ve got a test,’ but it only takes like half an hour to vote.”
Junior Elizabeth Kramer said she grew up going to the polls with her parents, so she was excited to cast her own vote, though she noted there was “no statistical significance whatsoever” to her individual vote.
Chris Sheils, also a junior, joined Kramer at the polls. He said both candidates have their positive attributes and their flaws.
“If only third-party votes actually meant something,” he said.
Many of the voters arrived in cars driven by volunteers supporting President Barack Obama. Occasionally, a Duke-chartered Charlene’s Safe Ride van would appear, drop off a student and sit quietly across the street until he or she came back out.
One driver, Durham resident Sally Swanson, was volunteering for the Durham for Obama campaign to help voters get to the polls. She said she had driven 10 or so people thus far.
For Swanson, giving the rides provided a happier alternative to staying home and fretting over the polls on the computer.
“I want people who want to vote to be able to vote, and I think the more votes that are reflected at the end of the day put Obama closer to winning North Carolina,” she said.
The voters seemed “pretty jazzed” in spite of the 45-degree evening chill, she said, adding that, if anything, the volunteers were more likely to be complaining about the cold.
But things did not go smoothly for every voter. Senior Ben Finkel, who was already registered, was told he needed to present proof of address in order to vote. When he returned to the site with further documentation, the requirement turned out to be the result of a miscommunication among polling place staff members. Sophomore Miranda Goodwin-Raab called the Board of Elections to clarify a question about her registration, but she said she received incorrect information and ended up having to use a provisional ballot.
Provisional ballots will be counted after the Board of Elections verifies the registration and address information, said Cheryle Roberts, Democratic judge at the George Watts Elementary voting site. The most frequent hiccup in the voting process, she said, is when voters change addresses without updating their voter registration and then try to vote in their former precinct.
The Watts site, a fluorescent-lit elementary school gymnasium with colored gym mats stacked along the wall, serves Duke’s East Campus residents. Not surprisingly, many of the freshmen were voting for the first time.
Chris Fiscella, a freshman, said that it can be easy to become distracted by schoolwork and forget about broader political issues at Duke. He made it off campus to cast his first ballot and said the process itself was very easy, but the effect was empowering.
Freshman Rhianna Lee also cast her first vote—one of the last at Watts, where 532 votes were cast before the polls closed at 7:30 p.m.
“It feels good to be able to have an input in what our country’s doing,” she said. “It helps me reflect on the freedoms we have that other countries don’t have and makes me really thankful.”
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