Students at UC Irvine endure hours-long wait to cast ballots at campus polling place

Hundreds of students at UC Irvine stood for hours in a slow-moving line to cast ballots on Election Day, with some claiming limited staffing at the campus polling place and delayed processing times for same-day registration contributed to the grueling wait.

“This is a bit of a nightmare, it shouldn’t happen,” said 21-year-old Frank Ganda, a general poll observer for Vote for Equality, studying Political Science and International Studies.

According to Ganda, many students had been waiting at least an hour to vote since 11 a.m. at the Student Center. The staffing, he said, had been insufficient to meet the demands of the growing line of students outside. His 22-year-old supervisor, campus coordinator Phoebe Caudill, seconded that, noting the lines had “quadrupled” after 10 a.m.

“I’m skipping class to do this. I think it’s more important,” said 21-year-old Ryan Stanton, a first-time voter majoring in business administration.

By around 2 p.m., the voting line stretched several hundred feet along a winding sidewalk and beneath a bridge near the campus Student Center. Most student patiently chatted with each other or monitored their cell phones to pass the time.

Despite having 20 voting stations, Caudill said they weren’t all in use due to limited staffing and slow processing times. Registrar of Voters Bob Page said he has sent additional staff and equipment to assist the nine employees, two high school volunteers and supervisor already at the location.

“The challenge is not a lot of students are registered who need to do the same-day registration forms. It may take longer to complete the same-day registration,” Page added.

He said the voting center at UCI has more voting booths than other centers in the county and there have been no reported technical issues. Additional staff were to handing out same-day registration forms to students waiting in line to help speed up the process.

Even so, the long wait times did not seem to dissuade most of the students from making it to the front of the line to eventually cast their vote.

“It’s important to vote for all the policies that will be impacting my future,” said 20-year-old Ellie Tran, a computer engineering major who had waited in line for over two and a half hours. Standing in line next to her was Luke Vargas, a 20-year-old Electrical Engineering major, who said he skipped two classes to vote.

Both students are first-time voters.

Some students had to leave the line because of midterms scheduled Tuesday, according to 27-year-old Zora Mihaley, a political science PhD student who received emails from students she serves as a teaching assistant for.