At Heritage Elementary, long lines of Liberty students

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Blog: Election Day gets under way

Long waits have been commonplace today at Heritage Elementary School, the precinct for on-campus residents of Liberty University, as a line winds from the school’s cafeteria through several hallways.

“It’s been steady all day,” poll worker Brett Beasley said.

The polls opened at 6 a.m. with about 50 voters-in-waiting, he said. Lines surged in the early morning and again at lunchtime. In between, busloads of Liberty students have kept poll workers on their toes.

“It’ll peak after work, I’m sure,” Beasley said between handing out paper ballots to voters.

Although it has been a busy day, Beasley said that was ex-pected. He hadn’t seen anything unusual as of early afternoon, when just over 2,000 of the pre-cinct’s registered 4,731 voters had cast ballots.

Vickie Elder, who has voted at this precinct for 21 years, was in place early and said she had never experienced lines like this before.

Elder said she was surprised to see so many Liberty students.

“I was wondering where all the students came from; that’s what I was wondering,” Elder said.

Residents reported waiting in line to vote for 30 to 90 minutes around lunchtime.

“Oh my God, this line is never going to end,” Liberty sophomore Valerie Gardner said at about 11:30 a.m., as she walked to the end. She and several friends drove to the polls in an attempt to avoid waits from busloads of students.

A little ways up the line, P.J. and Debbie Campbell stood with their 21-month-old daughter Abby.

“2004 was nothing compared to this,” said, P.J. Campbell, a Liberty student. “This is by far the most that we’ve seen.”

Buses to the polls for Liberty students are scheduled to continue arriving at the precinct every five minutes through 5 p.m., then that pace will slow until the buses stop running at about 8 p.m. The buses are scheduled to make more than 120 trips to the school today.

Liberty is providing transpor-tation only to the elementary school, although many of its students who live off-campus are registered to vote at several other polling places in the area.

The school is staffed with 18 poll workers, and equipped with two computer-screen voting machines. Five voting-privacy booths for marking paper ballots are placed against a wall in the cafeteria, and several other makeshift booths are placed at a table, using folded cardboard dividers for privacy.

Staff writer Alicia Petska contributed.