NEW ALBANY, Ind. — Voting is nothing new for Marilyn Peake, but voting before Election Day is a different experience for the Floyd County woman.
"I'm 82 years old so I've voted in quite a few," she said. "I don't drive anymore, so I wanted to get this done and over with, so that's why I'm here."
Tuesday marked the first day of early voting in Indiana, and many other voters had the same idea as Peake, who arrived at the Floyd County 4-H Fairgrounds in the morning and found a long line of people waiting to get inside that stretched to the end of the parking lot.
"I thought, 'Oh, I didn't expect this!' But I'm ready to wait and take my turn," she said.
"This is the longest I think I've been in line to vote," Katherine Sears, another Floyd County resident, said.
Some voters said they waited more than an hour at the Floyd County Fairgrounds but there were not many complaints from those waiting in line.
"It's nice weather. Come on out," Sears said. "It is a long line, but it gets you outside."
The wait was not nearly as long in Clark County, which had early voting available at the court building, but the clerk's office said it did still see several hundreds of voters come through Tuesday, which is on top of the more than 2,000 mail-in ballots it has already received back from voters.
But despite the wait, many voters like Sears and Peake said it was worth it to avoid the presumably longer lines at the polls on Election Day and to have the opportunity to let their voices be heard.
"I think it encourages more people to register to vote, for one," Sears said. "It encourages people to get out early and to avoid long lines and crowds the day of elections, which can be off-putting and discouraging to people."
"Some people sit back and think, 'Well that's not right,' but they didn't get out to vote," Peake said. "This is the way that you can get it done, is to come here and to vote and to do what you think is right."