The biggest problem AU students and faculty who voted in the D.C. area on Election Day may have encountered was rain.
Although news stations across the nation reported extremely long lines at polling places in various parts of the country, this was not the case for those who voted in the D.C. area, according to members of the AU community.
Richard Benedetto, a professor in the School of Communication, voted in Springfield, Va., said he did not have to wait in line to vote. He said he checked in and then voted on one of five touch-screen voting machines, finishing the entire process in five minutes.
"That's about it," Benedetto said. "A routine voting day. Nothing like the media hype."
The Metropolitan Memorial United Methodist Church, located across Nebraska Avenue from AU's main campus, was the polling place for D.C.'s 9th Precinct - the closet one to the university. At that location, people flowed in and out regularly but there were no lines.
Dorcas Adkins, the ballot box clerk at the United Methodist Church, said people who arrived before polls opened had to wait in line for about 30 minutes before they could vote, but that was the longest the lines stretched during the day.
Although the polling location had more than three times the amount of votes it had in the 2004 election by 2:15 p.m., it was still not very crowded, she said.
James Valvo, a senior in the School of Public Affairs, said he voted in the union hall for the International Union of Operating Engineers in Glover Park and encountered a line.
"The line was around the block," he said. "I waited for about an hour and finally voted around 8:15 a.m. The line moved fast; people were polite and courteous."
Although lines are an inevitable problem for some polling locations on Election Day, other issues can also occur.
Pat Munoz, the check-in clerk for Precinct 9, said citizens frequently come in to vote and discover they aren't at their proper polling location and poll workers must re-direct them. Additionally, people sometimes arrive to vote and discover their name isn't on the check-in list, which may mean they aren't registered to vote.
Munoz said she has never encountered an instance of voter fraud, which she thought would be very difficult to pull off.
Tom Parkins, the general registrar of voters in Alexandria, Va., said he has worked during elections for 24 years and has only dealt with three episodes of voter fraud.
It is impossible to register twice, he said. In addition, each polling location has lists of who can vote there, and who received absentee ballots, which increases the difficulty of voting twice, he said.
Parkins said the Alexandria voter registration office compares signatures, checks IDs and looks up addresses to make sure they are actual resident addresses and not made up or the location of a business.
"[Vote fraud] is extraordinarily rare," he said. "You may see some here or there but not on a massive scale."
Although there were no reported cases of voter fraud, there have been reports of an increase in voter turnout in the D.C. area. Maryland's voter turnout increased from 2,226,743 in 2004 to the unofficial turnout of 2,346,639 in 2008, according to the Maryland Board of Elections Web site. The Virginia State Board of Elections Web site estimated that 3,474,462 people had voted in this year's election, compared to 3,198,367 people in 2004. That year, 203,448 people voted in D.C., according to the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics' web site. However, there is an estimate that 228,062 people voted in D.C. this year.
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