On an Election Day with high stakes for Pennsylvania and the country, Penn students flocked to the polls and participated in voter engagement efforts across campus.
Students demonstrated strong voter turnout across all campus polling stations, far surpassing 2020 in-person vote totals. Throughout the day, campus groups including Penn Leads the Vote and Penn Democrats set up on Locust Walk, encouraging students to cast their ballots.
Students began casting their votes early, with over 150 students in line at Houston Hall when the polls opened at 7 a.m.
College sophomore Liann Lynch went to the polls as soon as they opened because she thought the lines were going to “get longer and longer” throughout the day.
“I thought there would be less people this early,” she told The Daily Pennsylvanian.
College junior Molly Sparkman, who also went to Houston Hall to vote as soon as the polls opened, said that voting with her friends “makes it better.”
At the Walnut Street West branch of the Philadelphia Free Library, a polling place for many Penn students who live off-campus, around 30 people were lined up to vote when the polls opened.
“We heard a rumor that there would be three-hour lines later during the day,” College senior Hana Ahanger told the DP. “And we said we were going to get on top of that.”
Some students arrived at polling stations early in the morning because their professors did not cancel class, making it difficult for them to cast their ballots later in the day.
"There's not really a lot of other time or opportunity that I felt I had later in the day," College junior Julia Gauffreau said, explaining that she has class until 6 p.m. on Tuesdays.
College first year Nikhil Pochana, a volunteer for Penn Dems who was stationed outside the ARCH building, said that he noticed some students did not bring in their mail-in ballots to surrender at the polling station, which caused them to receive a provisional ballot rather than being able to vote with a regular ballot.
“I think that's something that maybe for a future election we need to be more aware of,” he told the DP. “Sometimes people are requesting mail-in ballots but not knowing that they did that, or not knowing that they have to surrender it before they come.”
College first year and Penn Dems volunteer Alejandra Picon added that some students have encountered difficulties with their voter registration. She said that some students believed they had registered to vote, but when checking their registration status at the polls, their registration status indicated otherwise.
“It happened to me, where I registered and it didn't go through, and I had to do it again,” she said.
Many Penn students were first-time voters, and most polling places did not have more than a 30-minute wait time. College sophomore and first-time voter Aidan daSilva arrived at Houston Hall at 7:30 a.m. and left by 8 a.m. She called voting “the greatest obligation you could have.”
“We all have a civic duty to engage in deciding the future of our society and government," daSilva added.
At Paul Robeson High School and the ARCH building — two other major polling locations for Penn students — students expressed satisfaction with how “smooth” the voting process was.
College senior Shaan Patel, who voted at Robeson, emphasized the importance of voting in Pennsylvania given its status as a swing state.
“I think that, as Americans, we have a duty to make the right choice for ourselves and our future, and that voting is one of the best ways to exercise our democratic freedoms," Patel said.
College first year Isabelle Chapman, who voted at the ARCH building, echoed a similar sentiment.
“It does feel nice to be able to vote in a state where it actually counts,” Chapman said.
College and Wharton sophomore Janet Fu, who also voted at ARCH, told the DP that the long lines at the polls were “exciting.”
“I know that they ran out of stickers inside, so I think we're seeing a lot of really good turnout for students, which is very exciting,” she said. “It just shows that a lot of our student body is engaged in wanting to make a difference.”
Fifth-year Ph.D. history candidate and poll volunteer Taylor Prescott attributed the turnout to "fears" around key issues, including health care, economic policy, and abortion access.
“Turnout’s been good. I see people excited — people civically engaged,” Prescott said.
Director of the Graduate Student Center Meredith Wooten, a poll worker who began volunteering at the polls after the pandemic, said that Penn’s voter turnout numbers looked similar to where they were during the 2008 election.
“Turnout is really high,” she said. “When we got here this morning, there was a line of students by 6:45 in the morning — really, really incredible turnout. It's been steady all day. Lots of first-time voters and lots of folks from the college houses in the Quad.”
At poll places later in the day, including Walnut Street West Library, there was no wait time to vote.
Engineering senior Michael Imevbore told the DP that he was "pleasantly surprised" when he was able to vote without waiting in line at the library. He went to the polls with his friend, Wharton senior Tami Owolabi, who voted at the Penn Alexander School earlier in the day.
“I expected there to be a long line,” Imevbore said. “I was so scared when I pulled up that it would be, like, around the block or something, but it was cool.”
He said that he didn’t feel rushed when completing his ballot and that he took his time to review his selections.
“It's simpler than I expected, obviously, just clicking buttons,” Imevbore said. “But, I kept looking at the choices I made. I was so scared I was clicking the wrong thing. But, overall it was simple."
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