Crowds of frustrated students crammed a Montgomery County precinct last night while elections officials repeatedly reassured them that everyone would get to vote.

Virginia Tech students at St. Michaels Lutheran Church were well aware that a lack of planning for a record number of new voters had created extremely long lines. Many voters—at least a few hundred—turned away without voting.

At 6 p.m. yesterday, the tiny two-lane road that leads from Prices Fork to St. Michaels had gone from creep and beep to full stop. Along with a few dozen others, I walked in to avoid the massive traffic jam. It was dark and we stumbled in deep ditches alongside the road. A dozen student volunteers walked from car to car, encouraging people to stay in line and stay to vote, but many turned around when they saw the massive pile-up.

It looked like about 400 to 600 people, mostly students, were there between 6 p.m. and the time the polls closed at 7. The voters were in good humor but quite annoyed at having to fight their way through traffic down a tiny road to an obscure location three to six miles away from campus. The distance is a special problem for students who often don’t have cars. Although there were shuttle buses from campus, those arriving at 6 were mostly empty.

Everyone who was in line by 7 got to vote, but the line was so long and disorganized in the dark parking lot that a red T-shirt was passed to each person as they took a position at the line’s end. The improvisation seemed to help.

“There’s definitely some drama here,” said Tech student and Rock the Vote volunteer Angela De Soto. “Why wouldn’t all on-campus students be (voting) near the campus? The county was not prepared.”

“Young people are insisting on their right to vote, and they are not moving,” said Tech student Tom Owens.

Despite the long lines, things moved quickly inside the voting booths, and by 7 p.m. there were only a hundred or so people in line. County election official Rita Sullivan was relieved that she didn’t have to use a bullhorn to close the line. Montgomery County Sheriff Tommy Whitt had the bullhorn ready for her when the time came. Still, she had it handy, just in case she would have to be heard over the noise of what could have been an angry crowd.

Rock the Vote has taken serious issue with the way the precinct was handled. On the blog yesterday, they said:
“Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, young adults are also facing obstacles in trying to vote today. More than 5,600 people, mainly Virginia Tech students—who faced voting rights violations already this year—are registered to vote at precinct E1 in Blacksburg in Montgomery County in Virginia. That number is nearly double what the state law allows for polling stations—to make matters worse, the poll place is 6.5 miles from campus and has almost no parking.”

The Montgomery County registrar said it was a parking problem, but this seems out of touch, to say the least. Many Virginia Tech students were dealt out of this election by procedural snafus that could have easily been foreseen and prevented.

Radford City also turned students away from the polls for different reasons, among them, that the state law is supposedly unclear. This was widely noted, for example, in The Roanoke Times, in the national press, and in blogs all around the world.

(Read more about voting problems in the New River Valley at EverythingNRV.com.)

Special Comment From Bill Kovarik:

Let’s not forget about all this now that the election is over. We need electoral reform.

Yes, everyone in line got to vote. But the difficulty of registering, of finding that line, of fighting through the crowds, and getting into that line, is not something we should tolerate in the future.

Virginia Tech and Radford students were disenfranchised here by our local governments, and many students are angry. They should be.

Obviously, the Change We Need should start in the Montgomery County and Radford City registrar’s offices.

Bill Kovarik is Professor of Journalism at Radford University.