Early-morning surge at polls levels off to steady stream

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Blog: Election Day gets under way

An early-morning surge of voters standing in line, sometimes in the rain, leveled off into a steady stream of people in Central Virginia’s polling places this morning.

Showers fell periodically during the morning, and the National Weather Service predicted steady rain during the afternoon.

At Timberlake Christian Church in Campbell County, poll workers said about 200 people were in line first thing this morning, and many of them were there an hour before the polls opened at 6 a.m.

At Heritage Elementary School, where many of the 4,200 newly registered students from Liberty University were voting, more than 500 ballots had been cast by 9 a.m.Poll workers said people were in line at 5:30 a.m. and soon filled two hallways and part of a third. 

Most of the voters were choosing to vote with paper ballots instead of voting machines. The lines were much shorter by 9 a.m. at Heritage Elementary.

At the Elks Lodge on Old Mill Road in Lynchburg, more than one-third of the registered voters had cast ballots as of 10:30 a.m, said Donald May, precinct chief. That means about 1,400 people already had voted at the precinct.

May said he expects 60 to 70 percent of voters in the precinct to turn out by the time polls close. That would be about the same turnout the precinct had in the 2004 presidential election.

In Bedford County, registrar Barbara Gunter said, “lines are long.“ Gunter said she expected to have reports on size of the turnout from precincts by noon. Gunter said none of the county’s 27 precincts had reported problems with voting machines.

A spokeswoman at the Campbell County registrar’s office said “no, not really,“ when asked if there had been voting-machine problems.