Hopkins students have cast their ballots and are now awaiting election results, joining voters nationwide. Hopkins Votes held a March to the Polls event at 12:30 p.m. Students met at the Beach, and then walked or took a HopVan to the Waverly Public Library polling station to vote or register to vote on Election Day.
Maryland is one of nearly half of the states that allow same-day voter registration on Election Day.
Spriha Thapa, a senior majoring in Molecular and Cellular Biology, was one of the students who registered and voted on Election Day in Maryland. In an interview with The News-Letter, she shared her experience after missing the voter registration deadline in her home state.
“One of my roommates told me that I was eligible to vote in Maryland because I unfortunately was not able to register in my home state of Texas in time,” she said. “Registering to vote the day of the election [in Maryland] was very easy. I was able to get in relatively early and I was able to vote quickly.”
Adi Neelamana, a junior majoring in international relations, also voted in person in Maryland on Election Day. He described his view on the importance of the election, both for national and local races, in an interview with The News-Letter.
“I think when people talk about how important this election is, I agree, it is definitely one of those cases where just the general direction of the country for at least the next 10 years is at stake,” he said. “And this isn’t just a presidential thing, this is a down-ballot thing.”
On Election Day, the University offered Blue Jay Shuttles to polling stations near the Homewood and East Baltimore campuses from 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. For students on the Washington D.C. campus, shuttle service hours were extended to cover all times that polling places were open.
Other students chose to vote by absentee ballot, like Sam Roberts, a first-year graduate student in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the Bloomberg School of Public Health. In an interview with The News-Letter, he shared his experience voting by mail.
“I voted by mail in Arizona. It was pretty easy,” he said. “I used a voter assistance guide to choose and vote for different policies that weren’t just the President. [Arizona] had an abortion clause that they were voting on, which was kind of a big one.”
In an interview with The News-Letter, junior Jaden Garcia, who voted in his home state of Texas by absentee ballot, described why it was important that he voted.
“The reason why I vote is because my grandparents grew up during the Jim Crow era in Texas. They were Mexican-Americans and heavily discriminated against. They didn’t really get the chance to vote until the Civil Rights Act,” he said. “And so, I vote now because they went through that, and I feel like it is my duty now to make my voice heard since I have this privilege and they didn’t.”
Hopkins Votes’ programming continued later in the evening, when students and Hopkins affiliates gathered at 7 p.m. at locations across campus, including the Glass Pavilion, the LaB and the Hopkins Cafe, for an election watch party.
Arionna Bell, co-student director of Hopkins Votes, described the importance of the organization’s programming for Election Day in an interview with The News-Letter.
“Students are being more active and are not afraid to stand up and talk about what they believe in. We talk to students on campus, and they are so excited about being involved in this presidential election. For a lot of people this is the first election they are involved in,” she said.
While some students were excited about the potential results, others had more negative feelings about the election and what the impending results could bring.
“I’m pretty nervous,” Roberts said. “I’m curious to see what will happen if there is a Trump loss. I can’t imagine something weird not happening. I’m not sure what will happen with [a Harris loss], but not on the same level.”
In an interview with The News-Letter, Natasha Modi, a graduate student in Biomedical Engineering who attended the watch party, expressed her appreciation for the election-related activities on campus.
“I’m really excited that Hopkins has this community of voting support and incentivizing people to go vote because it doesn’t exist in every university, and I think that’s really empowering,” she said.
Maya Britto contributed reporting to this article.
