<p>Voters waiting in line for two hours or more is a disgrace. We should make national laws forbidding it; nobody should have to wait three hours to vote. I don’t know why this would be thought of as a partisan point of view.</p>
<p>Suburban Chicago (actual polling place was a small church): Got there at 6:30 am, literally did not take more than 2 minutes to complete it all and be back in my car and on my way. They asked for my name and address and had me re-sign a signature card that I had signed last time to compare the signatures, but they didn’t ask for any ID such as driver’s license. Had a choice of paper or electronic touchpad ballot; the touchpad was being used, so I just used the paper.</p>
<p>So what’s going on in the states with long lines? I arrive at the gym of my school. There are tables all around the room. One for if you don’t know which district is yours they’ll look up your address. There are maybe 8 districts in the room. Each has 3 people at the table - one looks up your address and signature and you sign next to your registrations signature. Sometimes they cover up that signature, mostly they don’t. Then they write your name on a list. Then they give you a ballot. You take the ballot to stands in the center of the room and fill it out. Then you go back to the area with the machine where the third person will help you stick it in the machine if you need help. I voted at 11 am and about 100 people had voted on the machine I used. I came back around 4:30 with a friend and about 250 had voted on it. One of the other districts in the room had a bit of line in the afternoon - but not more than a dozen people still. (I’m guessing people coming off 4pm shifts, but no way to know.) What I don’t know is how many registered voters there are in each election district. Tried to google it, but had no luck.</p>
<p>2 1/2 hours for a friend of mine–turns out only ONE scanner for her precinct.</p>
<p>Some of you aren’t telling us what state you are from. If you are faced with 30 state and local election choices to make, plus nonpartisan elections, plus several referendum and constitutional amendments, it could take each voter an hour to complete the ballot. Early voting takes a lot of pressure off the election day crowd (and lines), but if early voting days and hours are cut back that could make the lines longer on election day. Here in NC I think so many people vote early, and wait in line to vote early, the shortest lines were probably on election day.</p>
<p>I’m in NY. We don’t have early voting. No propositions this time, but we did have a senator, a representative, three judges and a couple of state level elections. No propositions. However since you no longer have to wait for someone to make decisions about filling out the forms (as you did in the lever days) it goes quickly. It’s basically a completely separate line you go in to to put your ballot in the machine. People don’t have to vote in the order they sign the registers. It’s really a pretty efficient system.</p>
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<p>I am wondering the same thing.</p>
<p>Aren’t the placement and number of polling places based on population?</p>
<p>It took me about 30 minutes at around 7:30 am in Virginia suburb of Washington, DC.</p>
<p>I’ll be honest with everyone, if I had to wait three hours, I wouldn’t vote.</p>
<p>I had an hour wait, and it was NOT waiting for an open booth. Voting took five minutes. Our hold up was because it was a five step process once you got to the front 1) fill out a form with your name 2) show the form to one of two poll workers who entered your name by hand into a large book 3) go to one of three workers with the same form. Each worker had a large roll book with everyone’s name and each person was in charge of 1/3 of the alphabet. This step was then signing your name next to the verified signature. No mention of ID. 4) get the ballot card (looked like a credit card) from another poll worker and swipe it into a voting machine and vote 5) Give the card back. </p>
<p>Really, if you look over a sample ballot and know who you are voting for (I always jot that out for myself) it’s probably not even five minutes.</p>
<p>My Florida county used an Accu Vote optical scan voting system. After filling in our paper ballot we had to get back in a line to feed our completed ballot into a scanning machine with the assistance of a close by poll worker (the scanning machine looked like a paper shredder!) The one machine wasn’t really ample for the crowd of voters and slowed things down getting out of there.</p>
<p>mathmom,</p>
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<p>I had the same system and it was ridiculously inefficient. Nobody could tell what line was for what. I got on line. After a while, someone told me the line was for half the alphabet (by last name.) I was in the wrong line. Got off line. Got on right line which was shorter.
Signed my name. Got a voting card. They had run out so the person in charge, an attorney, was using index cards instead. Smart man! Now to find a booth to fill out my ballot. First empty booth had no pen/pencil attached to wire for it. Went back to the table to ask if I could fill it out in pen–I thought maybe the scantron only accepted lead pencil bubbles. Went into booth to vote. The line of voters for a different electoral district was moving in the opposite direction. The people standing on that line, especially those taller than I am, could EASILY see which bubbles I and all the other people in that row of booths were filling in. </p>
<p>After I got out of the booth, I went to look for the scanner line. It took a while to push through several other lines of people waiting to get ballots to get to the scanner line. No instructions on scanner. Figured it out and submitted. Scan “supervisor,” my nice next door neighbor, asked for my secrecy folder when I was second on line for the scanner. So, she too could have easily read who I voted for while I stood next to her waiting.</p>
<p>While standing on the scanner line, I saw a friend walk in. She didn’t know where to go. Poll worker didn’t either. I spotted her. My neighbor in line let me get off and go over to tell her. After she got her ballot, she got on the wrong line, thinking it was the line for the booths–it wasn’t, it was the line for the other polling place–the one so close to the “booths” that they could easily see how anyone voted. Having submitted my ballot by now, I rescued her again and told her she could just go into a booth when someone else stepped out. She then got into the scanner line and I left.</p>
<p>The A-L and M-Z signs were about 2 inches tall–if that–and you couldn’t read them from 6 feet away, let alone from the back of a line with a hundred people in it.</p>
<p>It was an absolute madhouse!</p>
<p>^^You need a new Supervisor of Elections who hires and trains people to run things efficiently election day…that, or you need more cops at polling stations for when fistfights start up!</p>
<p>Every county in PA does the process differently - reading kathiep’s description, I would not guess we are in the same state! Allegheny county is very inefficient. We have 2 voting districts in the same gym - my side always has a shorter line because I make sure we keep it moving. Some workers are not very motivated to move quickly. We were told we must ask everyone for ID, even though they were not required to show it. That slowed things down. If they refused, they were still able to vote. We did catch a lot of women who had differences in last names on driver’s license vs voting registration due to marriage/divorce. We had them fill out name change cards for the next election. Once the voter got to the machine, it didn’t take too long, especially if they had used the touchscreens before. We have a lot of elderly voters who need more explanation. I think there were lines of up to an hour several times for the other district, at 7 AM when we opened and from 5-7 PM. (I barely had a chance to sit down for the 16 hour day.)</p>
<p>LOL, Jonri, just goes to show it’s all about the training. The desk where you check your address is right at the entry to the room. Most people actually know their district number and skip that desk. Each scanner was adjacent to each district desk so it’s pretty obvious which one you are supposed to use. The privacy screens in the booth things in the center are kind of a joke, though they also give you sleeves to carry around your ballot. Most people don’t bother, but I agree that may be the biggest issue. The poll workers had sharpies that they handed to you, not tied down at all. It’s a wonder more of them didn’t walk off.</p>
<p>Not sure what your voting card is.</p>
<p>MODERATOR’S NOTE</p>
<p>I think this thread has gone on long enough. I’ve had to delete some political posts. I’m going to close the the thread.</p>