The polls may have opened at 7 a.m. this morning but the election officials at Maple-Willow-Larch began this morning at 5:30 a.m.

Wayne Casperson, cq co-chair of the MWL voting precinct, has had a busy day. But Casperson said voting has been running smoothly and attributes it to a scanner the voting ballots go through to count votes, which is new this year.

“It’s a scanner that looks at the entire ballot and calculates the votes for each race,” Casperson said.  

At 7:15 p.m., 992 voters had went through the scanner. A constant flow of students have been in and out, Casperson said, noting students have had to wait longer because many students are doing first day voting registration.

“It got really busy this afternoon,” Casperson said.

Casperson has been at other voting precincts in Ames, but said this year is different.

“I know it’s a lot higher than it’s been in 2004,” Casperson said.

“Are you registered?” was a question being asked constantly throughout the evening as students trailed in and out of the voting precinct at MWL.

Courtney Arey, freshmen in biochemistrycq and a first-time voter, had expected to wait in line to cast her vote. She waited a little more than a half hour to fill the circle on her ballot to the Obama-Biden ticket. One reason Arey supports Obama is because she agrees with his plan for tax breaks for the middle class, and “because I’m the middle class.”

“He stands for a lot of the principles I believe in,” Arey said.