Freshman Alex Debruicker waited over an hour Tuesday night to cast his vote at the Indiana Memorial Union. He, like the hundreds behind him in line, and the hundreds that had come before him during the day, waited in anticipation of casting their ballots.

“We were outside originally and then they moved the line in,” Debruicker said.

Union poll workers had no other choice and were forced to move the line inside after the sun went down and concerns about the frigid weather grew.

For the third time that day, the polling station had run out of ballots and that was causing major delays yet again. Poll workers and IMU staff members like Matt Hamilton, zipped around the halls of the building trying to make sure everyone in line was at the right polling station or satisfied.

“We have all hands on deck,” Hamilton said. “We are more than happy to accommodate everything that is going on, just making sure that people understand that if they get in line before 6 o’clock, they have a right to vote and they can stay in that line –and nobody can tell them otherwise.”

That 6 p.m. deadline soon became irrelevant because Circuit Court Judge Mary Ellen Diekhoff signed a last minute order extending the polls until 7 p.m.

The Union was not the only scene of chaos in the county.

According to William Ellis, Chairman of the Monroe County Election Board roughly half of all polling stations in the county ran out of ballots at some point on Tuesday.

All in all, 1,495 people voted at the Union on Tuesday, according to Ellis. It was the second most attended polling station in the county. However, Ellis said only 27 percent of those registered to vote at the IMU cast a ballot on Tuesday and during early voting.

Not all the numbers are negative, however. Ellis said the 18-24 age group had the second highest turnout in the county, with 5,500 voting on Tuesday. Only 55-64 year-olds saw higher turnout with 8,443 voters.

The Big Ten Voting Challenge will be tallying results from student voting for the next few months. The effort is being spearheaded by the Political And Civic Engagement.

“The Big Ten voting challenge results will not arrive until spring or summer,” Lisa-Marie Napoli, Associate Director of PACE, said in an email. “I know that is a very long time but that is how the data works, for better or worse.”

For now, Napoli said she was hopeful that the outcomes will be record-breaking. According to PACE, in 2014 midterm, there was a 14 percent turnout among IU students but that is expected to have been surpassed considering there was a 19 percent turnout among student voters at the national level.

Record numbers nationally, mixed with ballot shortages and record early voting could signal record turnout for IU students, but only time will tell.