LEWISTON — Bates College students aren’t backing down at the polls.

“Batesies really showed up,” said Hannah Prince, a junior who headed to the Lewiston Armory to cast her vote for the woman she hopes will be the nation’s first female president, Hillary Clinton.

Bates students made a big push to boost turnout this year, with a tally sheet on the dining hall’s wall showing that at least 600 students had voted by noon, not all of them locally.

“Turnout from Bates is through the roof,” said Max Gardner, a Bates freshman from New York City.

Groups of students walked between the school and the nearby armory regularly throughout the day, giddily chattering about the experience and sending selfies of themselves at the polling place.

Emma Egan, a junior from Freeport, said the mystery fliers distributed at the college over the weekend that appeared to be an effort keep students from voting flopped at their mission.

“It got me a little fired up,” she said, though she would have voted anyway.

“This is a historic moment,” Egan said, and she wanted to be part of it.

“I’m very excited that the first time I ever get to vote, I get to vote for a woman,” said Katherine Cook, a junior from Vermont.

Not everybody from Bates backed Clinton, though.

Connor Divincenzo, a junior from Massachusetts, said that after educating himself about all the contenders, he decided that both Clinton and Republican Donald Trump had too many flaws. “I don’t really trust either,” he said.

Divincenzo said he wound up voting for the Libertarian Party’s Gary Johnson, whose agenda most matched his own. He said he figured he would cast his ballot for the person he thinks would be best, even if Johnson can’t win.

Most voters at the armory, though, were not students.

Ray Riley brought his son, Finn, 3, to help him vote. He said he always brings his children to see how important elections are.

“There are so many places in this world where people don’t ever have this option,” Riley said. As an American, he said, he feels a responsibility to vote.

Riley said he voted for Clinton, “the lesser of evils.”

“It’s nice to feel you have a voice,” said Bates College junior Conner Speed.

Cook said the long, nasty campaign had left her “feeling disillusioned,” but the finality of actually voting gave her hope.

She said people need to realize “this election isn’t just about you, it’s about everyone else.”

At the college, sidewalks were chalked with many messages urging everyone to vote and pointing the way to the polls. Posters and banners hung on walls at the dining hall. And many students were involved in trying to rouse their classmates to go vote.

Christopher Crum, a senior from Colorado, said he had planned to vote by absentee ballot back home, but when it didn’t arrive in time, he decided to vote in Lewiston instead.

He said he was “not terribly concerned” about the threats implicit in “that unfortunate and misleading flier” or Gov. Paul LePage’s comments Monday.

Crum said some people don’t want Bates students to vote, but noted they’re going to anyway.

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