Thousands of Kentucky voters head to the polls on Election Day

LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Tens of thousands of voters poured into polling locations across Kentucky on Tuesday for Election Day.

In Louisville, the Kentucky Exposition Center experienced a steady stream of voters, but there weren't any big lines. Some of the smaller neighborhood polling locations like schools experienced some wait times, but voters took the situation in stride while grumbling about the longer walk at some locations.

The vast majority of Jefferson County’s 20 in-person polling places had less than a 10-minute wait all day. For example, it took less than five minutes to vote at lunch time at both the Academy @ Shawnee and Carter Duvalle Elementary School.

After weeks of early voting, the main polling places had the process down, according to voter Greg Gant.

"Super easy. Simple," he said. "Everything was, 'Go here, go there.' Really simple."

Kentucky Secretary of State Michael Adams said Tuesday he expected more than 700,000 people to vote in-person Tuesday statewide. That’s on top of the more than 1.5 million Kentucky residents who voted early, including more than half of all registered Jefferson County voters.

Voters opting to head to the polls on Election Day said they felt their ballot going into the machine is what they prefer, and voters like Karla Wright are glad they waited.

"Being a longtime voter, I've always voted in person, and I didn't have any issues that would keep me from coming out," she said. "And I just felt it was the way I wanted to exercise my responsibility."

Some results are expected in Kentucky on Tuesday night, but those votes won't be official until Friday, which allows more time to count ballots put in the mail and postmarked by Election Day. But election officials believe a huge majority of votes will be in and counted.