Students were lined up before noon on Tuesday waiting for the doors to open at the Marano Campus Center polling place.

April 19 was the New York State primary election and many it was students’ first time voting.

Students wore hats and T-shirts to show their support of their preferred presidential candidate. Some posted to social media reminding their friends to vote. Erik Stehlar had “Feel the Bern” scrawled across his forearm in pen to announce the candidate he was voting for.

“I’ve been following Bernie [Sanders] since he first started in April of last year and I have done a lot of research on Hillary [Clinton], so I know how she stands and how she has stood on everything,” Stehlar said.

Stehlar has donated to Sanders’ campaign, participated in phone banking in six states and talked to his friends about the importance of voting.

“I want to make a difference in this world and I want [Sanders] to help us,” Stehlar said.

The polling place in the Marano Campus Center was open from noon to 9 p.m. Peggy Place, a poll worker who has done the job for 15 years, said an estimated 80 voters came on Tuesday, which is a good turnout for the area.

Voters ages 18 to 29 made up 17 percent of democratic voters at Tuesday’s New York primary election, according to the New York Times. Although Hillary Clinton ultimately won the election in New York, 67 percent of 18 to 29 year olds voted for Bernie Sanders. Many Oswego State college students, like Stehlar, were supportive of the 74-year-old Brooklyn-born candidate.  Donald Trump was the Republican winner of the primary election.

Some students choose to register to vote in Oswego, while others mailed in absentee ballots in advance. Students who were registered as independent in New York were unable to vote in the primary election.

Oswego State student Nathaniel Haga voted for the first time on Tuesday. He registered to vote in Oswego since he spends most of the year here while in school. Haga was the first person to cast a ballot at the campus’ polling place on Tuesday. He said the atmosphere seemed pleasant, even though some students were having problems with not being registered to vote.

“People are being respectful, they’re being kind, they’re not being mean about it,” Haga said.

Emily Rundle is registered to vote in Oneida County, so she mailed in an absentee ballot a week before the election. She said the process was “really easy.”

“I had sent out for [the absentee ballot] a couple months back because I wanted to be super prepared,” Rundle said.

Rundle talked to her friends and used social media to encourage them to vote.

“Compared to the older generations, we have such a power; we have such a voice,” Rundle said. “I think that everybody should use that.”

Samuel Christiansen drove home to vote on Tuesday rather than mailing an absentee ballot.

“It was kind of complicated and I was doing it very last minute, so I figured it was safer to go home and vote,” Christiansen said.

He drove under two hours to reach his polling place.

Other students, such as Brian Krosky, chose not to vote in the primary election. Krosky said he does not have enough confidence in any candidate to cast his vote.

“I’m exercising my 14th Amendment rights and not voting,” Krosky said.

He said he is waiting to make his decision until the presidential election in November.

According to the New York Times, this is the first presidential campaign in which Americans ages 18 to 29 make up approximately the same proportion of voters as baby boomers do. Each group makes up about one-third of the electorate. The turnout of young voters this year rivals 2008, Barack Obama’s first campaign for president, the New York Times said.

Christiansen said he researched presidential candidates by watching the debates. He said social media has also “blown up” during the election season. He reads articles and posts his friends are sharing to stay informed.

“With candidates, especially outliers like Trump and Sanders, people think that this election’s going to make or break America,” Christiansen said. “They’re realizing that everyone has an opinion and some opinions can be potentially dangerous, or they perceive them as dangerous, and they want to keep that danger out of the executive branch.”

Other students did not have a smooth experience and were not able to vote although they attempted to.

Kailey Somers said she was looking forward to voting for the first time this week. Somers said she filled out an application for an absentee ballot since she lives in Long Island, but was “annoyed” when she never received the ballot in the mail.

“I’m not the only one who this happened to,” Somers said. “My friend lives in Oneida County and she didn’t receive hers, so she had to go home to vote.”

Jean Brown, one of the poll workers in the campus center, said there were many student voters who were unable to cast their ballot at the polling place in the Marano Campus Center.

“There was a lot of frustration because a lot of the voters didn’t understand what they needed to do to be able to vote today,” Brown said.

Place said they turned away roughly 50 students who were not able to vote on Tuesday because they were not registered or were not registered to vote in Oswego.

Brown said that while the students were “very pleasant and polite and fun to be with,” they were disappointed when they were unable to vote.

“One of the students called Bernie Sanders’ campaign and complained that they were not able to vote here,” Brown said.

Brown said she feels it is Oswego State’s responsibility to further educate students about the process of voting.

“We would like the college to do more,” Brown said. “We understand they do Rock the Vote, but it seemed like when the kids signed up…they didn’t understand that if they were going to vote here, they had to use their address for here.”

Somers said there should be a more convenient way for college students to vote to avoid mix-ups.

“I think if you’re enrolled in college you should be able to substitute your registration place at your college and not have to go through the whole process of absentee ballots,” Somers said.