I will be a poll worker on Election Day. Seventeen hours is a very long time to sit and hope you get a chance to eat your lunch or dinner before it gets cold. If a voting machine acts up in the morning, then the rest of the day won’t be very much better. We have sample ballots for people to look at while waiting in line. I feel for the voters who either get turned away or who have to drive to another polling place. No matter how the system is setup there always seems to be a few people who slip through the cracks. If your polling district mailed you a postcard it helps to bring it with you. It saves time looking you up, and it is used in cases where we can’t find you in the books.
I have all the big stuff completed on my “vote by mail” ballot. But like the others from CA have mentioned, there are SO many propositions and local measures I still have to plow thru. Hope to get it done this weekend!
Wow you guys all vote absentee? In PA you need to have one of a few acceptable reasons to get a ballot. I’ll be at the polls on 11/8.
I voted by absentee ballot next week. I wanted to avoid the lines on Election Day, and I didn’t want to take the risk that an unexpected event, like the need to work late, would prevent me from voting.
I voted early yesterday. One of the early voting locations is right next to my office, so I went over after work. My regular polling place is across the street from my house, so it’s quite convenient for me either way 
We had some constitiutional amendments (Louisiana has way too many of those). And a Senate race with 24 candidates So presumably a runoff is in our future. But I’m done for now.
Voting in California is a massive pain. There are so many propositions to research, and I’m sick of commercials with cheesy actors explaining in a condescending tone why I should vote this way or that way. Thankfully, I can vote by mail. It makes the process less stressful.
I’m looking forward to November 9th, and the end of the madness.
I tired of my mail box filled with political ads…Can’t wait for Nov 9th.
I wish November 9th would be the end of the madness, but I fear it will not…
I hate the initiative system in California. It leads to badly drafted laws, and as mjstewart says there are tons of ads telling you how to vote. And the worst is, the ads don’t even tell you what the proposition is supposed to do. It’s all “Vote against Prop 7, it kills kittens” or “Vote for Prop 7, for our children and our veterans,” and I’m all “What the heck is Prop 7?”
It’s not absentee, it’s how we vote in Colorado, by mail ballot. In the past there were early polling places, which were not absentee, just early (in a booth). Absentee was different, requested in advance and sometimes NOT counted unless there was a close race or issue.
In Colorado, one of the ballot initiatives is to make it harder to get initiatives on the ballot. Can you guess how I’m voting on THAT?
In California, anyone can vote by mail. Also, you can sign up to be a permanent vote by mail voter, so they just send out your ballot each time without you having to request it. I expect at least half of the ballots cast in California will be by mail. And some of the rest of them will be early in-person votes. Not that many people on the West Coast vote in person on Election Day, because all of Washington and Oregon vote by mail too.
I voted a while ago. I mailed in my ballot about 10 days ago, & it was recorded as received about a week ago. (In my county it’s possible to check status online)
I agree its hard to wade through all the propositions in California – but it doesn’t get easier to procrastinate. I just spent time over the weekend after I received my ballot to go over everything, one by one, and made my decisions and moved on. I found this web site helpful – http://www.peterates.com/props-1116.shtml – it’s just a private individual making recommendations and I didn’t agree with (or vote) the way he recommended on some – but it’s a pretty straightforward, plain English explanation of each. It certainly wasn’t my primary source of information, but definitely was a timesaver.
My vote by mail envelope has prepaid postage… so I don’t have to worry about postage stamps.
I also didn’t get the handbook with the state proposition info until about a week after I had already voted, so i just tossed it in the recycling bin. I had downloaded the PDF before, anyway.
I know the poll worker (actually, she was the head worker!) was out of line and incorrect. This is one reason I won’t be working as a pollworker (although I’ve been asked). Who wants to put up with her histrionics for hours on end? In fact, after the last fiasco of long lines in the last presidential election, I’m not even going to put up with lines at all. It’s absentee voting for me from now on (multiple reasons for absentee voting in my state).
Well, we live in another country so we are truly absentee. 
I found ballotpedia.org to be extremely useful.
Completely neutral, yet very comprehensive with good links, explanations, lists of people/organizations supporting and opposing everything, and includes every single national, state, and local election ballot item.
We don’t have early voting, but I also have never had more than a five minute line on election day. Nothing would make me change my mind in this election, but I always wonder what if something terrible comes out about one of the candidates in the last two weeks of the election and you’ve already voted?
It hadn’t occured to me that the fact that there isn’t usually a lot of extra stuff on the ballots speeds things up.
First day of early voting here in MD, so Happykid and I popped off to the closest location. In and out in about an hour. The parking lot was full, but the line moved smoothly.
I early voted Tuesday and there was a line around the building but it moved quickly.
I googled “voting long wait times” and several news stories from around the country appeared! Seems like lots of voters are already getting out there.
You mean there’s more?. =))