Voting is seen as a rite of passage for many young adults, including many newly 18 JAHS students. Voter turnout is a large factor in both local and national elections, especially in close races like this year.

At Jonathan Alder, many students had relatively painless voting experiences, such as senior Amara Suchy, who successfully voted at JAHS on Tuesday morning. 

“I thought the voting this year was pretty easy. The polls weren’t very busy at the high school, and it was a really easy in and out thing. Took less than ten minutes,” Suchy says.

Nick Mast, another Senior, felt the voting environment contributed to his excitement to vote.

“It was painless; it was very straightforward. It was kind of crowded, there were a lot of old people and they were very nice to me,” Mast says.

However, not all new voters had a smooth Election Day. Annson Pagura, however, faced more struggles with the voting process.

According to Pagura, he filled out his paperwork but was unable to vote due to a processing error. “[The Board of Elections] mismanaged my form,” Pagura says.

Every vote was very important in this very close election cycle, as the final results for the open Ohio Senate seat show Vance winning the race by only 6.6%. 

The same is true about many congressional and gubernatorial races nationwide as well. The GOP is ahead by 2 seats as of Thursday in the very close Senate race after winning the House of Representatives majority by 23 seats. The Senate majority has not yet been claimed because of the runoff race in Georgia and slow ballot reporting from Nevada and Arizona.

Overall, first time voters played a vital role in this year’s election, as stated by VOA News:

“Nationally, 27% of eligible voters under age 30 cast ballots, a percentage matched only once in a midterm election in the last 30 years, during the record-breaking 2018 election.”