On the final day of voting in the presidential election between Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris and former Republican President Donald Trump, a steady stream of voters made their ways to polling locations throughout the area Tuesday, both longtime voters and those who’d never voted before.

Being a first-time voter, University of Massachusetts sophomore Ashley Darko said she appreciates the opportunity to vote on matters important to her, including protecting reproductive rights for women.

“As Americans, you’ve got to come out and vote,” Darko said, speaking after completing her ballot at the Amherst Regional High School polling site late Tuesday morning.

Darko said people can’t complain about the state of affairs in the country if they don’t cast a vote. “If you want change, you’ve got to go out and make it,” she said.

Fellow UMass sophomore Chloe Espinal, accompanying Darko to the polls, cited the “civic duty” of voting, though acknowledged that many college-age people might have sat out the election if not for the withdrawal of President Joe Biden and the hope brought by the candidacy of Harris.

“It feels like a lot is at stake for women’s rights, there are a lot of rights that could be taken away,” Espinal said, noting the election is “scarily close.”

Both students were surprised that they didn’t have to wait in lines, and acknowledged they didn’t do too much work preparing to vote, with many of the down-ballot candidates unknown to them.

“This is first time voting, but no one teaches you fully how to vote,” Espinal said.

Darko, though, said she had read up on the five referendum questions.

At Leeds in Northampton

At Leeds Elementary School, one of Northampton’s polling locations, Kay Cowperthwait said while she was happy her vote was in, the election anxiety followed her to the parking lot.

“I hope it’s over in the next day or so,” Cowperthwait said. “I don’t actually feel great about that. I think there’s been a lot of groundwork laid for maybe it not to be over quickly.”

She’d considered voting early, but with the high stakes of the election, felt superstitious her ballot might get lost in the mail.

Besides the presidential race, Cowperthwait said she wanted her vote to count for ballot Question 5, as friends in the restaurant business strongly advocated against the initiative that would raise the minimum wage for tipped workers.

“I respected their opinion because they’re on the front line,” Cowperthwait said. “It would seem like, of course you should raise somebody’s wage. But when you see how it all works for the restaurant, it just makes more sense for the tips to be more central.”

Like the Leeds voters, Lilly McDonald, a UMass senior from Weymouth, also wanted to have a say on Question 5, especially since she has been a service worker and bartender.

“I had my mind made up and did a lot of research beforehand,” McDonald said of the referendum questions.

A first-time voter, McDonald also cited the presidential election as drawing her to the polls. “As a woman, I feel it’s really important to vote,” McDonald said. “It’s an important right a lot of people fought for.”

Votes cast in Southampton

At Southampton Town Hall, voters were casting ballots for both presidential candidates.

Dmitriy Kondratyev said he cast a Republican ticket because the party aligns with his values.

“I am a Republican, I’m conservative, so I vote Republican,” said Kondratyev.

Also a regular voter, John Burruto, an Amherst resident and Marine Corps veteran, said he has been voting in elections since the 1960s. “I vote every chance I get,” Burruto said.

Burruto said he has been frustrated and angry — “rationally, though” — at the Democratic Party, which he holds responsible for the United States heading in the wrong direction since 2021.

“The last four years have been terrible,” Burruto said.

Aside from president, Burruto said he was interested in the down-ballot elections and also, as a retired educator, wanted a say on maintaining the MCAS test as a graduation requirement, which is Question 2 on the ballot.

“MCAS can be adjusted, but not watered down,” Burruto said. “If you don’t have standards, you have nothing.”

Nervousness abounds

Jordan Thomas, voting in Leeds, was among those nervous about the election outcome on the national level.

“I guess it’s mostly dread, really. I mean, there’s hope underneath there,” Thomas said. “But I think things have been so weird and turned out so wrong in the last, you know, eight years, that it’s hard to feel much confidence, particularly when you know every news source is saying this is as tight as it could possibly be.”

Kyle Harrington, a UMass senior from Bedford, said he has been waking up at night nervous. “It will be a relief once the votes are tallied,” Harrington said.

Before going inside the Amherst high school gym to vote, Harringon said he tries to participate in all elections. “I think this election is pretty important,” Harrington said. “It’s very divisive, and I’m just doing what I can to contribute to that.”

If tensions were high at the ballot box, poll workers weren’t feeling the same anxiety behind the scenes. At the Leeds site, Clerk Beth Kilduff had begun to open the early voting and mail-in ballots for the machine to count, observing that the first three hours of Election Day had gone smoothly. She said extra poll workers were hired to accommodate the influx of voters going to the polls, with 424 voters casting their ballot before the third hour was over.

“A lot of people are coming through, and we have a lot of early voters and mail-in ballots,” poll warden Bob Riddle said. “If it keeps up like this all day long, we will have more people actually coming in to vote than early votes.”

Kilduff said people of all ages trickled in throughout the morning, from senior citizens who have voted for years to families with young children in tow. Riddle, however, said the demographic during early voting appeared to be much younger, with many Smith College students participating during those two weeks.