Tuesday at 6:45 a.m., citizens climbed out of their vehicles and lined up in front of the precinct polling center located at the Health Center on Route 7. The ground was still wet from the previous night’s rain.
Some have looked forward to and others have dreaded Election Day, but both turned out to cast their vote.
The line started building up at the precinct before 6:30 that morning.
At 6:59 a.m., the doors were unlocked. Even though it was a few minutes early, the first voters to go in didn’t come out that quickly, but when they did, their faces were filled with happiness and relief that their votes had been cast and their part was done. By 7 a.m., the parking lots surrounding the building and streets leading up to it were filled with parked cars.
Whitley O’Neal, 26, who works at the Gertrude C. Ford Center at Ole Miss, went early to vote.
“I’m ready for it to be over with,” O’Neal said. “It’s been a really long process, and it’s been really exhausting just watching the candidates go at each other. I’m trying to be (confident that who I’m voting for), but I’m not 100 percent.”
Polls opened across the county in Taylor at the same hour.
It was about 7:05 a.m., and there were very few people who filled the parking lot. Leonard Rockette, a Taylor native, said he’s feeling fairly optimistic about the election.
Rockette supports Clinton.
“The thing with (Trump) is when you’re born into a certain elite area, it’s hard to relate to people who basically came from nothing, and around here, that’s how it is,” Rockette said.
Around 7:45 a.m., the line was half the size it was when the polls opened for the morning back in Oxford, and 23-year-old Brady Bramlett arrived to vote. He works for the Ole Miss athletics department.
Bramlett said he thinks the 2016 election has been drawn out and has made many people upset and angry.
“I think today is going to alleviate a lot of that,” Bramlett said. “Hopefully, after this, our country can get back on the right path. Today I’m voting for the person who I think could get our country back on that path.”
Voter Calvin Pinson, 38, brought his grandmother to Oxford 5 precinct so they could both vote.
“There are ups and downs on both sides because you have differences in opinions on both sides as to who you truly believe in and who can do the right job,” Pinson said.
Pinson said he believes the candidate he voted for has a good chance at winning the election today.
“For the people, if they look at the facts and the politics, they will know who the right person to vote for is,” Pinson said.
Another woman left the Oxford 5 precinct agitated.
She said, “I’ve been voting here for the past two elections, and now they tell me I have to go to another precinct to vote because they rezoned everything. They waited to tell me until after I had stood in line for 30 minutes. You’d think they would let people know when their voting precinct changes.”
She got in her vehicle and drove off.
