Organizers called Election Day at Penn a success as students and community members alike turned out in large numbers across campus to vote.
Despite some lines, the voting experience this November was widely reported to be a smooth one.
"It was uneventful, and uneventful is good," Wharton sophomore and Judge of Elections Greg Kaplan said as he was preparing to close the polls at David Rittenhouse Laboratory.
Yesterday was the culmination of months of work by activists with Penn Leads the Vote, as well as both the Penn Democrats and College Republicans, to register voters and get them to the polls.
All five polling stations on the Penn campus reported higher-than-usual voter turnouts this year.
According to statistics from Fox Leadership, three times as many Penn students - 1,500, up from 500 - voted on campus this year as compared to the midterm election in 2002.
Kaplan said a rush of voters arrived in the afternoon and early evening, but he said that no serious problems emerged over the course of the day at DRL.
There were, however, some small irregularities at other locations.
A few dozen voters who said they had registered close to the Oct. 7th voter-registration deadline did not show up on the rolls of registered voters at polling stations and were forced to fill out provisional ballots.
College senior Hershel Eisenberger, an inspector at the Steinberg-Dietrich polling location, was not worried.
"This happened two years ago," he said. "You just do a provisional ballot."
One highlight for organizers and voters was an appearance by re-elected Pennsylvania Gov. and Penn alumnus Ed Rendell, who arrived at DRL toward the middle of the day.
Penn students were well represented among poll officials as well.
"I'm here because this is where help is needed," College sophomore A.J. Schiera, a volunteer at the DRL polls, said early in the day.
The 262 voters at DRL surpassed Schiera's morning projection of a 200-voter showing.
Polls closed at 8 p.m., and, in Harrison College House, volunteers set to work packing up the voting machines.
The ballot counts come out of the back of the machine on a long strip of register paper, which must be separated into seven copies and signed multiple times.
The poll officials huddled together to make sure all the paperwork was completed and the final ballots placed into the envelope before two policemen arrived to pick up them up.
The final result was posted in the lobby above two empty boxes of coffee. At Harrison, Democratic Senator-elect Bob Casey had 182 votes, compared to Republican incumbent Rick Santorum's 25. Rendell received 183 votes to Republican challenger Lynn Swann's 24.
