A New Generation, Voting the Old-Fashioned Way

Coming from all corners of campus and surrounding communities, a continuous stream of voters Tuesday at the Xfinity Center showed that the record-breaking haul of early ballots nationwide and in Maryland hadn’t exhausted the pool of those determined to have their say in this year’s election.

Voters interviewed outside the arena overwhelmingly said they’d planned to vote in person, and to do so on Election Day—a stance somewhat against the grain during a presidential election season that has seen some 2.2 million votes in Maryland and more than 100 million nationwide cast in advance. 

For some students participating in their first presidential contest, following in the actual footsteps of centuries of Americans—rather than voting early or mailing in a ballot—feels like a reassuring touchstone after a year blighted by a deadly pandemic, an economic downturn and widespread sadness and anger over inequality and killings of Black Americans by police.

“With all the problems in the world, we don’t have a lot of great or exciting things happening these days, so I wanted to be here and have the experience of going to the polls in a normal way,” Deangelo Ahmed, a freshman public health science and pre-med major, said after voting.

In a UMD student poll released last month, 84% of Terps said they intended to vote. Just after 8 a.m., Ja’Khi Green, a freshman who plans to major in management, was the 6-foot-6-inch embodiment of that determination. Classes and football consume nearly every minute of the Terp offensive lineman’s life, but coaches and athletics staffers have been pushing the importance of voting–and added substance to their words by giving the team Election Day off.

“Maryland Football has been talking a lot about our right to vote and have a say,” said Green, who said he’s fully bought into the idea of doing his civic duty. “I’m ready to go vote, and that’s it.”

Fellow freshmen Julia Mitchel, a special education major, and Brooke Butler, a kinesiology major, made the hike from Denton Hall to Xfinity together just as they’d planned. 

“We thought because it is our first time voting, it would be more memorable if we did it this way,” Mitchel said, adding they’d been discussing the potential complexities of the Maryland balloting system awaiting them inside. “We don’t want to mess up.”

Longtime voter Freddie Mitchell of Takoma Park wasn’t worried about messing up his ballot himself—but he did have doubts about the prospect of his ballot reaching its destination with mail-in voting, or other funny business if he didn’t scan his own ballot in an election over which ominous clouds have been floating. 

“I knew for certain I was going to do it in person—I wanted to make sure,” he said. “It’s not a normal year.”