Last Paw Paw Township Hall voter casts ballot at 10:55 p.m.
PAW PAW, Mich. — Betty Schafer was the last person to cast a ballot at Paw Paw Township Hall on Election Day. After getting in line just before polls closed, she waited almost three hours to cast her ballot at 10:55 p.m.
"I feel pretty blessed I have the ability and opportunity to cast what I feel I want to do," Schafer said. "We had fun. I visited with people in line. We had fun. One guy got pizzas. We shared some of it."
The long waits started much earlier. By dinner time Tuesday, the line outside the Paw Paw Township Hall had grown long , with voters facing two-hour waits to cast their ballots.
Many voters already in line said they'd been there a couple hours, and by 5 p.m. Election Day, 2020, the line grew longer as voters got off work and joined the queue.
The polls closed at 8 p.m., but as long as a person was in line when the polls closed, they would still be able to vote.
Despite the long wait, Schafer and many other voters said they were in good spirits.
The Paw Paw Township Clerk, Linda Jordan, said she had never seen anything like the line for the 2020 election.
People began lining up at 4:30 a.m., she said, and the line didn't stop until 10:35 p.m.
Jordan said there were challenges leading to the long wait times for in-person voting on Tuesday, including same day voter registration and COVID-19 safety measures.
"Because of COVID, we’re limited to how many people we can have in the room to social distance, and for wearing mask," said Jordan. "We have voters that absolutely refuse to wear a mask, so that puts us in a situation where we have to use a separate area for these people to protect our poll workers and our voters. That takes up more room, more time.”
In the past 10 presidential elections, the winner in Van Buren County has gone on to win the White House.
