COLLEGE PARK, Md. — Some people have always voted by party. Others feel strongly about a specific issue. Still others are drawn to individual ballot initiatives.
This election cycle, some people say they’re voting to prevent someone they don’t like from winning. A Reuters poll released in May showed the anti-vote was equally strong on both sides. Later polls showed voters were increasingly motivated from a positive view of their candidate. Beltway News spoke to voters at a community center in Democratic stronghold College Park, Maryland, home to the University of Maryland, to see where they landed.
(Photos by Evan Pretzer and Preston Childers)
Keshab Kowtha, 20
“I would have voted regardless … if it was as contentious an election as this one or if it was a choice between very good candidates on both sides of the aisle. I feel like one of the candidates, all his terrible rhetoric, is just too awful for me. I just can’t sit by and let him have a chance of getting at the White House. My vote purely on a statistical level won’t likely matter, but even if it didn’t count, I would still end up voting.”
Frank Jiogo, 20
“I am voting for Hillary Clinton, not because I really want to, but because I feel like she is the best we have right now — and she is not Donald Trump.”
Olivia Rosner, 18
“This was my first election ever, so … I was excited to vote for the first time, and also I have very strong negative feelings about one candidate. And this election was a little bit scary so I wanted to put in my vote for the first woman president. I’m very excited about that.”
Fanny Featherstone, 65
“Hillary Clinton, I think, answered all the questions, and she is for everybody. We already are a great America, and we can only get greater as far as I am concerned. Trump just seems like a big bully. He says all these mean things and then he has to turn around and retract it and act like all is fine.”
William Smalwod, 34
“I voted Democrat this time mostly because of the anti-Islamic statements made by Donald Trump. Hillary had rational answers that made sense. I could hear arguments for or against them, but at the end of the day, it was rationality versus irrationality.”
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