Far fewer registered Virginia Tech students showing up to vote

6:26 p.m.

This time around for gubernatorial and local races, Virginia Tech students didn’t show up in large numbers as they did for the presidential election.

The E-1 voting precinct, which was temporarily moved to Kipps Elementary School, is the largest precinct in Montgomery County, but on Tuesday it certainly didn’t look like it.
   
More than 5,000 people are registered to vote there, mostly students.
   
During a two hour time period, only about a dozen of them showed up to cast their ballot.

“A lot of my friends just live here to go to school,“ said Virginia Tech Student Ryan Hunt. “They’re out of state. They didn’t really feel that passionate about the election and others just flat out didn’t care.“

Hunt tells WSLS he waited in line for 45-minutes to cast his ballot in the presidential election, but on Tuesday, he didn’t have to wait at all.

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3:55 p.m.

As of 2:00 p.m., the Montgomery County Registrar’s office says 12,853 voters had cast a ballot.  The county has a total of 54,567 voters registered.

At the largest precinct in the County, E-1, only 831 voters had cast their ballot by 2:57 p.m.  The precinct is home to 5,715 registered voters, most of them Virginia Tech students.

In contrast, last year a total of 3,812 votes were cast in the E-1 precinct by the end of Election Day.