Megan Newsome felt nervous and giddy Thursday afternoon. She gathered friends and ate cake.
It wasn’t her birthday, graduation or wedding. It was the day she voted.
Newsome was one of the 7,908 people who voted early at the Reitz Union for the first time since it was reinstated as an early voting location, said TJ Pyche, the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections spokesperson.
“I felt like we were waiting for a ride at an amusement park,” Newsome, a 22-year-old UF alumna and a former Vote Everywhere ambassador, said.
Newsome was a co-plaintiff in the lawsuit to allow universities to be early voting sites. An injunction allowed the Reitz to be a temporary early voting location for the midterm elections.
The Reitz had the third-highest turnout out of the six early voting locations in Alachua County, according to the Alachua County Supervisor of Elections’ website. The top spots were filled by Millhopper Branch Library and Tower Road Branch Library.
In total, 40,882 people voted early this year, compared to the 17,983 people who voted in the 2014 midterms, Pyche said.
It would be difficult to argue against the new location’s impact on turnout, Pyche said. While a judge will decide whether college campuses can be early voting locations, each county’s supervisor of elections will make the ultimate decision.
Contact Hannah Beatty at hbeatty@alligator.org and follow her on Twitter @hannahbeatty_
Nestor Garcia, a 21-year-old industrial engineer major, attends the early voting session on Oct. 22, 2018, at the J. Wayne Reitz Union to vote for the first time.
