Not political! Describe your voting experience

Third time was the charm. Voted last night, after opting not to stand in a very long line the first two days we tried. About a 20 minute wait last night.

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We register annually for vote-by-mail ballots (over65). Didn’t do it on time for the primary election so voted early in person this spring.
We were out of town when ballots were mailed but could see them in our Informed Delivery app, so we knew they would be in our held mail bin.
Filled them out Tuesday, put stamps on and drove them to the post office (inside drop slot). I’ll check in a couple of days to see if they have been accepted. Texas doesn’t have ballot drop boxes but we have lots of early voting days and you can vote at any early voting location in your county. On Election Day you have to go to your home precinct location.
Didn’t get a sticker :cry:.

ETA thanks to @Youdon_tsay , my comment on Election Day voting doesn’t seem to hold true any more. Hooray for computerized databases.

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Voted a few weeks ago with my husband and my son who was home from college on fall break. Three locations for early voting in a county of over 330K people. Locations open every day but Sunday. Wait wasn’t too long on a weekday early afternoon. Helpful efficient volunteers. Filled out paper ballot and placed in the scanner. Easy

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We’re going to vote on Election Day. We live in a small town and I don’t expect long lines. We’ll see! I just enjoy voting on the actual day. :slight_smile:

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FYI, I don’t know where you live, but in my county you can vote in any precinct, even on Election Day. I would check that as I would hate to have misinformation spread. :slight_smile:

I used to enjoy voting on Election Day, but the lines were ridiculous the last two elections. I think people are shocked to find that there are races other than President, Senator and Representative. They spend lots of time trying to figure out who to vote for on the ā€œsurpriseā€ races. I get perturbed, because I want to say, ā€œJust leave those blank if you are clueless!ā€ That’s not how it works, though, because people have a right to vote no matter what … so I now prefer to just vote from home for the big elections. It keeps my blood pressure from spiking! :wink:

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We like to vote on election day and it is easy for us to do so that is what we will do next Tuesday. We have a lot of local and state races and propositions that we will be voting on too. We always fill out our ballot ahead of time so that the actual voting in person is easy.

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Facebook memory from four years ago.

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I love that our state does mail-in ballots. Last night, I sat down with three voters guides and worked my way through the ballot. On my lunch break, I’ll walk my ballot over to a drop box near my work. After about 24 hours, I will be able to track my ballot’s receipt and processing online. I did try to make sure my signature was good, because I’ve been contacted once or twice in the past for verification because my signature has changed over the years since I registered.

So, I have a paper trail, a digital trail, and confidence that someone is actually looking at my arriving ballot. And I could even wear an I Voted sticker if I wanted to (it was tucked in with the ballot).

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Where I live if you go to the wrong precinct on election day you can only fill out a provisional ballot.

Note too, @dragonmom . It must vary by state.

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They will try to get you to the correct precinct first if it’s not too late to make it.

H and I decided to take our absentee ballots to one our county’s early voting centers to run them through the machine ourselves. We figured that it would be two less ballots our clerk has to process. We decided that if there was a line, we’d take them to our clerk’s office - but there was just one person waiting in line in front of us. It was easy … we completed a voter slip with name, DOB & address. Then we gave our drivers licenses to someone who compared signatures & ran the information through the system to verify that we hadn’t already voted. She took the top part of our ballots and recorded that we were there to cast our votes. That worker gave us a ballot sleeve and put our voter slips in a plastic pouch on the outside. After that, we walked to another table where a worker took our voter slip from the pouch on the sleeve and told us to feed our ballots from the sleeve into the machine. No workers were at the machine watching us (in other words, no one was trying to see our ballots!). The machine told us our votes were recorded, and we were outside in no time. Easy!!

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County just tweeted:

We are getting a little off topic here…

But election guidelines and locations of polling places vary by state, and locations vary by town.

Please call your registrars of voters to find out where you go to vote…early or on Election Day (and those locations might not be the same).

Better to go off topic a bit and give correct information, IMO.

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I dropped off my expat partner’s ballot at the American Embassy in the city where he’s on a work assignment. They put the ballot through the x-ray machine, then I dropped it into a lock box. They will be sending absentee ballots by diplomatic pouch.

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My husband’s voting experience, with some fun sound bites for everyone’s enjoyment:

  • ā€œWhere’s my mail-in ballot?ā€ On your desk.
  • ā€œBut where on my desk?ā€ Right there in front of you, honey.
  • ā€œHow do I open this?ā€ Just like any other piece of mail.
  • ā€œHow do I do this?ā€ Read the instructions just like you would with anything else.
  • (prior to yesterday) ā€œYou don’t understand…I’m REALLY busy.ā€ Ok, so am I and so are the rest of us.
  • ā€œBut I’m REALLY busy. I don’t have time for this.ā€ That’s fine. If you choose to not vote, then you don’t get to complain about presidential politics for the next 4 yr.
  • (to me reminding him of the deadline to mail in his actual ballot) ā€œBut you don’t UNDERSTAND! I’m BUSY!ā€ Life is all about choices, honey. :joy:

Am happy to report that I played the role of a supportive wife and dropped it off at the post office so it could go out in yesterday’s mail.

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I have a question about early (in person) voting, because my state does not do that.

Many people (and news stories) are talking about the long lines for early voting. Does that mean if those states did not allow this early voting, the lines on Election Day would be much, much worse?

Lines vary by your precinct, and how many people are registered to it. IN all my years of voting in this state, I only recall waiting more than 15-20 minutes in 2008 and 2012. I voted by mail in 2020 due to the pandemic.

Early voting is available in limited locations. That is why the lines are long. On election day all the polls are supposed to be open, so the voters should be spread out across all the voting precincts. Sometimes on election day, lines are long at many precincts.

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Short answer: yes. Although in my county, MANY more places are open on Election Day than the 40ish or so early-voting locations. Still, it would be a nightmare if there were no early voting.

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