University of Michigan students wait hours to vote
ANN ARBOR (CBS DETROIT) – Michigan had only a few disruptions at the polls last night, but hundreds of University of Michigan students were standing outside in the cold for up to four hours last night before casting their vote.
There were a few weary-eyed students at the University of Michigan Wednesday morning after staying up late doing their civic duty.
Jason Morgan, state representative-elect for the City of Ann Arbor District 23, didn't think he'd be at the polls past 2 a.m., but he had a gut feeling.
"I showed up, and I saw two-hour lines at 10 a.m. I thought we were going to have a problem," Morgan said.
Morgan did what he could to make sure students stayed in line so they could vote. First, he called out for coffee and pizza and made another ask before the temperatures plunged at sunset.
"The Washtenaw County Democratic Party put out the word to the members and said we need blankets," Morgan said. "And let me tell you, we got blankets; we had more blankets than I could have imagined."
One U of M student described the line as 'insane.'
"Once I was in it, I figured, well, might as well stick it out," Graesen McAllister, a U of M freshman, told CBS Detroit.
McAllister got in line at 6 p.m. but didn't cast his ballot until 11:45 p.m.
He was lucky because the software began acting up when the clock struck midnight since it was technically after election day.
Officials fixed the issue, and voting resumed.
"They brought in extra clerks when and where they could, right? You only have a limited body of clerks," Catherine Carver, lead for the University of Michigan's Democracy & Debate initiative, said.
The hours-long wait happened at one of the two Ann Arbor clerk's satellite offices on campus. One of them opened in late September.
"We kept saying are the students coming?" Carver said. "But students are deadline driven."
Prop two, now law, allows voters to cast their ballot in person up to nine days before an election. Hopefully, it'll alleviate long lines at the polls on election day.
Morgan, who spent part of his morning picking up trash voters left behind, wishes elected leaders would pick apart Election Day.
"There are a lot of things we need to work on; I think we need a, we've got to have a very serious look at what happened after the fact here so that we can make sure this never happens again," Morgan said.