Early voting at HPER might decrease long lines

A fear of long lines brought students to the School of Health, Physical Education, and Recreation on Tuesday for early voting.

First-year graduate student Charita Daniels voted on Election Day during the midterm elections in 2006 and said she decided to vote early this year because it was too hectic last time.

“I know on Election Day it’s going to be worse,” Daniels said. “The election a couple years ago, I was in line for hours. I had to skip class to vote.”

This year marks the first for early satellite voting on campus. Students can vote from 11:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. in racquetball room 12 of the HPER through Thursday.

Junior Marissa Wechsler said she would have voted early even if there were no convenient, on-campus location.

“It’s just shorter lines and knowing you already voted,” Wechsler said. “You’re not rushing to vote on the last day.”

Justin P. Hill, chairman of Students for John McCain, said he and his organization are encouraging students to vote early so the lines will be shorter on Election Day.

“If you don’t get in line on Election Day at the right time, then you cannot vote, and we just don’t want that to happen,” he said.

He also said he wanted to encourage students to vote for the elections they were informed on.

“I think what we’re encouraging is if you don’t know them, don’t vote for them,” Hill said. “It really hurts the local candidates when people just vote straight ticket.”
IU College Democrats president and senior Anna Strand and president of IU Students for Barack Obama Rose Byrne distributed pamphlets and spoke to students before they went in to vote. Strand emphasized the need for students to be aware of the non-presidential races.

“We want to be out here to inform students of all the races they can vote for,” Strand said. “We think it’s really important for us to be out here and visible before they vote.”
Strand encouraged students to come in as early as possible.

“We want students to come in and vote,” she said. “The lines are going to get longer. The Election Day line could be hours long. We just want everyone to be able to vote.”
While Democrat and Republican supporters stood ready to distribute pamphlets to students, most said the distribution of information did not influence their vote.

As an out-of-state student, junior Justin Morales of Lake Charles, La., said he would only be voting for the executive category.

Morales said he was excited to vote, and he said he thought the HPER location would bring in more students.

“It’s going to get a lot more numbers of people voting if you bring it to them,” Morales said. “It’s really good they’re bringing it down here.”