I confess I open H’s and fill out the envelope for him, so all he has to do is fill in the ovals and sign the spot where I point my finger. And then I seal it and walk it down to the registrar.
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I saw a meme about counting on men to vote is like counting on them to make their own dentist appointments. 
My husband felt that!
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Me too. I have voted using punch cards, flipping levers, filing in circles, at a caucus. I have voted early in person where they had to pull the right precinct from a huge cabinet, like a draftsmen’s file cabinet. I have stood in line for 3 hours. I have voted at a booth where my 22 month old daughter hit the ‘vote now’ button before I was done (but I was then DONE).
Voting by mail is the best. I did it last night at home and it still took 2 hours as there are so many ballot measures (I think 14 state and another 10 city?). I did fill in the wrong number on one but luckily I was also a ‘no’ on the next one.
I can still choose to vote other ways - absentee, in person on election day, in person early at the headquarters or one of several centers. They will pick you up if you need a ride, you can register on election day. No excuse not to vote.
And there were only 5 races with people in them - president, US Rep, State Rep, CU Board of regents, and an RTD (transportation district) (oh and an uncontested DA race). There were a lot of judges but we just vote to retain them, so a ‘yes or no’. No governor, senator, state senator, mayor, or dog catcher.
I like it because I can take my time. I will now put it in the car and drop it at the box at Eisenhower park (named for Mamie, not Ike) I drive by twice a day (and will still forget to do it until Monday or Tues). So easy.
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Brooklyn, NYC, where I will be a pollworker on Election Day. I went to my county (Kings!) board of elections and used thr dropbox there when I dropped off my request for diect deposit of pollworker pay.
The ballot is very, very long.
President and vp
U.S. senator
NYS Supreme Court judge (vote for seven)
U.S. congress
NYS Assembly
NYS Senate
Six yes-or-no ballot measures
Brooklyn Civil Court (vote for six)
NYS Civil Court (vote for 2)
My polling place is in the lobby of an apartment building which has a community center inside, maybe .25 mi from my building. Early voting site twice as far, in a high school. Early voting is last and next weekend 8am-5pm, every day M-F this week 8am-8pm. Election day polls open 6am to 10pm, with everyone waiting on line at 10 permitted to vote. Very long work day for Oldmom!
Although NYS is very blue, my neighborhood and Congressional district are much more purple than most of the city.
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D23 and I voted early while she was home for Fall Break, very easy no lines. DH votes by mail, but dropped his ballot off in person (received a lovely handshake as the first ballot dropped in person to that location).
My oldest and youngest are both abroad and sent their ballots in. Both know it might be a while before they are received and counted.
Our local polling place gave each of my children a standing ovation the first time they cast their ballots (each did as soon as they turned 18). D23 asked if everyone gets that kind of reception the first time they vote, I told her I think everyone who goes to our polling place does.
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For those who don’t have early voting, we didn’t, either. In my swing state, citizens can put constitutional amendments on the ballot with a citizen led petition drive. We voted for early voting in 2022, and in the process, we also approved changes that included allowing voters to request an absentee ballot without a reason (previously, absentee ballots were only allowed under certain narrowly defined circumstances). It’s really made the voting process less stressful.
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Tried to vote Sat. and the line outside was huge so I just kept driving. Went back today and only waited a couple of minutes to vote. Glad it is done!
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Maybe yes, and maybe no. In my state, every town is required to have one early voting place. Towns with over a certain population can elect to have more than one early voting place. So a larger city might have 20 precincts on Election Day which spreads the voters out. But they might only have 2 or 3 early voting places…thus the lines.
In my small town, there are two voting places on Election Day, but only one voting place for early voting. So on Election Day, really the registered voters are divided roughly in half between the two sites. For early voting, everyone goes to one place.
I’m sure we will have some lines at some times during Election Day, and we have had short lines during early voting when a bunch of people come at the same time.
And this is my real experience as I voted early myself, worked as a poll worker for early voting for two days…and will be a poll moderator for the general election on Tuesday.
I voted by mail weeks ago. Almost always vote by mail going back many years. Took about 5 minutes. Suburban. Not a swing state.
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Thanks for the replies. That is interesting about the selected early voting places. Where I live, I have to vote in a designated place. So it would be a big change for our system.
I have read about Colorado and they seem to be doing things right.
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I live in Oregon, which is a vote by mail state.
Last weekend was parent’s weekend at my kid’s college, so (as planned) I took my kid’s ballot out to him to fill out, seal and sign on his own, and then I brought it back to put in our local drop box rather than rely on the mail.
There have been several incidents just recently of people lighting the ballot boxes on fire in our city and over the border in Washington state.
When I fill out my ballot tomorrow I will take ours to our local library, where the ballot box is indoors by the front desk.
I miss the camaraderie of voting with my neighbors as I did decades ago at my local polling place in my home state, but I’m so grateful that I can fill my ballot out at my kitchen table and take my time reading about each candidate, judge, and ballot measure.
It’s appalling that many people have to stand in line for hours to vote.
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After a few failed attempts before and after work, I left two hours early today to get DH to go vote together. His superpower is being able to find and fit in a parking spot in any situation. We went to a location 25 minutes away from home where the lines were half of those closer to our house. He found parking in a neighborhood not too far away from the polling place. We parked legally, but others were parking closer in a no parking zone. There were about 150 in line according to the county website and it took 90 minutes from getting in line to casting our ballots. It was very organized and went smoothly though. Our fellow voters and the poll workers couldn’t have been nicer.
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Our drop boxes are required to be lighted and videoed 24 hours a day and are picked up many times a day (by two people, one Rep and one Dem). I don’t know if they pick up in the middle of the night, but do until at least 10 pm. Boxes are at the rec centers, light rail stations, church parking lots and I think at the police substations.
I can’t believe some towns only have 2-3 places to vote. Even in the olden days (before vote by mail) there were dozens of places even in the smallest towns. The one time I waited HOURS to vote was when they came up with a system to have only a few bigger places to vote and you could go to any one of them and the ‘computer screen’ would pull up a ballot for your precinct. Disaster, as every single person had to be looked up in a computer. If you had your voter card with you, you could skip to the front of the line and use the old machines and they could put the number in. Next election? Back to the precincts.
Even in my smaller town as a child, they used almost all the school gyms for voting (no gym on election day), plus churches and the town hall.
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Our small city (40K) uses all the elementary school gyms and city rec centers. They used to still have school and gym was in the classroom, but more recently it’s a teacher development day.
In the days of the lever machines, two of my coworkers were the maintenance people for all machines. They HATED election days because they had to be at work before voting started and until everything was done and packed up in the evening.
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So do all of the poll workers where I am. 5 am and I’m guessing we won’t be done until 10 pm at the earliest. Polls are open from 6 am to 8 pm.
We are fortunate to have excellent poll workers in our community, and a list of folks on stand by just in case.
It makes the process move along so much better with enough workers!
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Voted this morning. Second try.
Poll workers remarked that this was the shortest the line was, we had 4 or so in front of us.
The system was the same as in my precinct and had less workers than Election Day typically does.
A form to fill out, someone to check ID, someone to print out our ballots. That took the longest. I’m sure it’s because every township has elections but on Election Day, they have lots of ballots already printed. It was a pretty clunky operation tbh.
I can see why the lines have been long, the person in front of me, they had tried before also.
It seemed that the set up was less efficient than Election Day.
We saw several young people voting which made me happy. Everyone was in a good mood.
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This boggles my mind LOL.
Every town has precincts and each precinct has its own polling station. Most are in churches or schools or firehouses.
When you go in you give your name and they look you up in a big book of paper registrations of voters. You sign your name next to your name and that is how they match you. If it’s your first time voting, you have to show ID.
Then you get a paper ballot and go to a desk and fill in scantron type bubbles to vote. You take the ballot and insert it into a machine and you’re done!
It just sounds so foreign to say there are a variety of locations to choose from to vote. I guess everything is connected in those areas. In PA it is all old school.
Our town of 4,000 has only one voting location.
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We did it that way for years. Then the disaster year, 2004, (the only time I remember people standing in line past 8 at night), then they ‘encouraged’ early voting and put machines in grocery stores (and you could still vote anywhere in your county on those machines). Things kept getting better and better, and then vote by mail but you had to sign both envelopes, and that caused problems. We’ve got it down now. Everyone gets a ballot 3 weeks before election day, and you can use it or vote in person.
I learned last night there are 44 ballot boxes around town, and I think there are now about 10 places to vote in person. One is a church right by my house and I went there for the primary because I misplaced my mail in ballot (found it 3 days later). There were about 10 people doing check in, about 10 stations to vote, and 2 guys putting the ballots into the box. And I was the ONLY one voting!
In Colorado they’ve been scanning the ballots as they arrive, and at 7 pm on election day they push the button and all those votes are immediately counted. Then they count any that have arrived that day, they do the final pick up from the boxes around town, and the county clerks start reporting them to the Sec of State. Pretty smooth process.
And if you put your ballot in the wrong box (wrong county), the clerks have an agreement to get them to the right county. This happens more than you think as we have a city that is completely surrounded by Denver, and that city is in another county. People who commute to work often put their ballots in the wrong county. My daughter did it a few years ago.
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What states should do, encourage everyone to vote.
Some of these states seem to want to do the opposite.
Yea for Colorado for making it easy to do your civic duty!
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