By the time the polls opened at 7 a.m. today at the First Assembly of God voting precinct in Columbus, J.D. Dillinger had been waiting in line for 45 minutes, the first of roughly 75 voters who were standing in line.
Don’t mistake Dillinger’s early arrival as a mark of enthusiasm for the major party presidential candidates, though.
“I think it’s pretty pitiful that these two are the best we can come up with,” said Dillinger, a U.S. Air Force retiree who now works as a SIM instructor at Columbus Air Force Base. “But as bad as it is, I never thought about not voting.”
Dillinger is hardly alone in his assessment. But while enthusiasm for the candidates may not have been high, the early indicators suggest turnout will be strong.
The polls close at 7 p.m.
At the Hunt Museum voting precinct, 32 voters cast their ballots in the first 15 minutes of voting.
“That’s pretty good,” said Aaron Glenn, who is serving his fifth presidential election as a poll worker. “Everybody is in a good mood, and it looks to me like they are eager to vote.”
At the Carrier Lodge precinct, 83-year-old Marguerite Jourdan, accompanied by her son, Wayne Jourdan, was among 60 voters who had cast their vote in the first 45 minutes, a good turnout for a small precinct of only 1,036 registered voters.
“Oh, it’s a nightmare,” she said of the candidates. “I don’t remember the first (presidential) election I voted in, but I’ve voted in every one since then. So I voted today, and I hope to vote again in four years.”
Not all voters were as pessimistic about Tuesday’s election, however.
When 84-year-old George Turner reached voting age, Jim Crow laws prevented the African-American from casting a ballot.
For him, the opportunity to vote is something he values, regardless of the choices.
“Hey, the way I look at it, it’s good to be able to vote,” he said. “So decide who you’re gonna vote for, and go vote. That’s pretty simple.”
Absentee voting, which ended Monday when the last of the mail-in ballots were collected, also showed strong interest in the election, with 2,116 absentee ballots cast in Lowndes County, exceeding circuit clerk Teresa Barksdale’s prediction of 2,000 when absentee voting began in September. In Oktibbeha County, the final tally for absentee votes was 1,525.
Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].
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