Elisa Wiseman
Waiting times at Gordon Commons and other student polling locations were relatively short on Election Day.
Taylor Thomas, a UW-Madison freshman from Stevens Point, was excited to vote in his first presidential election as he waited in line to cast a ballot at Gordon Commons.
There was just one problem — “I feel a little ripped off by the candidates,” said Thomas.
It was a common sentiment with many first-time voters interviewed on Election Day. Several students were disheartened by their “limited options,” as one student called it.
“I’m excited to vote but I don’t particularly like either candidate,” said Thomas Amaya, a junior from Milwaukee, who named social divisions and economic issues as the areas he was most focused on when deciding who to support. He was torn, he said, but ultimately decided to vote for Hillary Clinton, “because I don’t want to go back socially.”
A sense of “settling for Clinton” was the consensus among many students. Several said they’d vote for her to avoid a Trump administration — but not out of support for her policies. Others remained undecided and planned on making a game-time decision once inside the polling booth.
“I want everything to stay the way it is. I don’t know what I’ll do,” said Matt Tiloquist, a sophomore from Madison. “Well, I kind of know. I’ll either just vote for Hillary or write someone in, like maybe Bernie [Sanders]. I have to decide if I want to waste my vote or not.”
Lack of excitement aside, engagement in the election was high, with records broken for early voting rates, and students volunteering as election officials for the many campus-area polling places. And despite concerns that new voting rules would cause chaos at the polls, Election Day went by smoothly on the UW-Madison campus, with high turnout and very little waiting time reported.
Due to the high early voting numbers, the city prepared for a record turnout to the polls, said Madison Ald. Mike Verveer, who has been a longtime poll worker in student districts. Extra ballots were printed, enough for a 140 percent voter turnout — providing more ballots than registered voters.
“The Madison City Clerk’s office has done a better job in recruiting election officials,” said Verveer. “We’ve been very pleasantly surprised by the turnout.”
With plenty of ballots and volunteers on hand, virtually no campus-area polling place reported waiting times longer than about 15 minutes; that included lines for out-of-state students who had to get special identification cards, which are required under Wisconsin’s strict voter ID law. The university set up satellite photo ID offices at every on-campus polling place to make sure students who needed IDs could get them to vote.
While most students were not wild about either presidential candidate, they were not willing to pass up their first chance to vote in a presidential election.
“It’ll be an interesting next four years no matter what happens. It might be one of the most important elections in recent history,” said Emily Fassbender, a UW-Madison freshman. “So it’s scary, but exciting.”
