Live updates: Crowds of people line up for services at Thurston County voting centers
Crowds of people headed to Thurston County voting centers on Tuesday, including the Lacey Timberland Library, where residents could drop off ballots or get a ballot and vote.
About 60 people were in line before the doors even opened at 10 a.m. Tuesday at the library on College Street Southeast, said Diann Stewart, operations supervisor.
She then counted about 290 people who filed into the space during the early part of the day, Stewart said. Some people stood in line for as long as two hours, and some didn’t wait at all if they were dropping off a ballot.
Dabney Tompkins, 81, of Lacey, said she waited in line to get a replacement ballot because she misplaced hers, she said.
Tompkins, who moved to the area about two years ago from California, said she only voted for president because she did not feel knowledgeable about the other races and issues.
Andrea Kelley, 25, of Lacey, also waited hours in line Tuesday. She recently moved and did not receive a ballot in the mail, so she headed to the library.
Kelley said this was her second presidential election.
“Doing nothing is not OK,” she said about the importance of voting.
Brian Hacker, 36, who said he is stationed at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, moved to the area about a year ago from Fort Bliss in Texas.
Hacker was voting for the first time, he said, adding that he voted only for president because he, too, was not familiar with all the local issues. He expects to move again in three months, he said.
Teresa Gibson, 57, works near the Lacey library, so she decided to walk there to drop off her ballot and get a little exercise at the same time. She didn’t wait at all to do that, she said.
Steven Dilley, 65, of Olympia, said he came to the library because he finds it hard to read the paper ballot, so he voted with the assistance of a computer.
“Democracy is on the line,” he said about this election. “And our freedoms will be taken away if we don’t vote.”
Meanwhile, a line of about two dozen people stretched along the outside of Thurston County’s primary voting center in Tumwater Tuesday afternoon.
That permanent voting center, located at 2915 29th Ave. SE in the Mottman neighborhood, opened earlier this year and has more capacity than the center at the Lacey Timberland Library. Notably, it’s located next to the county’s ballot processing center.
The line moved at a steady pace as two Thurston County Sheriff’s deputies watched from a spacious parking lot.
Alexandria Logue missed the deadline to get her absentee ballot from Louisiana. She now lives in Olympia so she decided to visit the voting center.
“I wasn’t informed until this morning that I missed it and I’m military,” Logue said. “I called up here, got more information and they told me I could register up here to vote.”
Logue said her family is what made her want to vote on Tuesday.
“I have two daughters and my parents have four daughters, so their safety and health are what matters to me right now,” Logue said.
Damika Patrick, a Rainier resident, said her feelings about reproductive freedom were a key motivator for her Tuesday.
She said she has sisters who have had miscarriages that required a dilation and curettage surgery and she doesn’t want to worry about that potentially happening to her.
“Some of the states (with abortion bans) are so much so that you almost have to be dead before they will help you,” Patrick said. “So, if that were to take over our entire county, if my sisters continued to try to have babies and they had another miscarriage, they could die or have lifelong complications.”
Patrick also said she wants to see people treated equally and more positivity in politics.
“Just in the past eight years, I’ve seen so much negative come from politics,” Patrick said. “I would like to see positives come out of that (politics) instead of negative reactions and people hating each other.”
Richard Binkley, an Olympia resident, said he chose to wait in line because he prefers to vote in person.
“I think Americans should be voting in all of the elections really,” Binkley said. “Since we have the ability, we should vote, so I think coming out is important.”
Likewise, Vijaya Kota, an Olympia resident, said she felt it was her civic duty to vote. She said inflation is among her top concerns.
“I feel as a citizen it is right to vote to elect the right candidate,” Kota said.
The Lacey library and Tumwater voting centers are open until 8 p.m. Tuesday.
This story was originally published November 5, 2024 at 2:01 PM.
