I'm lucky I can go any time during the day since I work from home and the polls are a half mile away. DH called me a half hour ago and said the line was out the door to the end of the parking lot at the fire hall we vote in and hadn't moved in the 10 minutes he was there. He's a police officer and had to head to work in Maryland so he'll probably be waiting in an even longer line tonight.
OH! Give my condolences to DH but good for him for taking time to vote. I know how hectic a police officer's life is - thank him for me!
I guess you are all standing in a long queue waiting to vote
I'm Done! Took about 8 minutes - and 5 of those was for the guy checking people in flirting with the "young gals"
Morning Izzi! I'm getting ready to leave for work soon! I'll vote after work!
Carolyn - how's if feel to say that? I'll vote after work. Hope all is still in happy mode.
Morning Carolyn....I hope you have a good day today.....how was yesterday ??
Could someone please tell me why the queues to vote are/are expected to be so huge ? When we vote here in a general election we just stroll down to the local school/church hall or whever they local polling station is and vote. I've never heard of there being long queues waiting to vote
Must be a US vote thing
It really depends on where you live, how many polling places are available, how many voting machines are assigned to each polling place and how many people are assigned to go to each location.
For my area it's most of the public schools and I don't expect lines to be more than 20 minutes long, but I could be wrong - I'm hoping they have a lot of machines.
Down in SoCal, there is it seems about one voting place every 500 ft. OK well not really but I am surrounded by 2 elementary schools, 3 churches, 1 community hospital and one youth correctional center, 1 high school and 2 middle schools and not to mention the country register recorder down at the end of my block along with the main police station. There's a shot of Kirsten Dunst coming down the stairs of the Norwalk Register Recorder on Oct 20th. She voted early, yeah well we ok my dogs were walking there that day and I saw the lady except didn't recognize her.
Izzi,
To answer your question, you are assigned a place where you need to vote so you don't have a choice where to go. Usually, there are only a few people ahead of you depending at what time you go. But this election is hotly contested so more people than usual are voting, assuring long lines almost everywhere. Some states will let you vote before today and save your vote. Others, like NY, only let you vote early if you will be away from home today and you filled out a form earlier and sent it in to the headquarters for the area you are supposed to vote. Every state has a range of time the polling places are opened. In NY, it is from 6AM to 9 PM.
So, we are certainly in for a longgggg day today. But in the past, we didn't find out who the president was going to be for months. Let's hope, whoever it is, that won't happen again.
For months, it always amazed me how one candidate concedes before all the votes are counted.
Well here in NYC the lines are wrapping around the blocks . . . my youngest daughter actually chose to get up early so that she could do it with me (NYC public schools are closed today because that's where we vote, but my girls are at a private school so had to be there by 8) . . . we got there at 6:30 and barely made it out at 7:45 for her to go on to school. Very exciting, though! At my girls' school today they were holding a vote with real voting machines, having to check in with a "polling person," etc., to give them the real experience.
They held a mock election debate at April's school. Seems the hot topic around here is Prop 8. Surprisingly (and keep in mind that she's in a Catholic High School) the majority of the kids in school are a no for prop 8 - (protect marriage amendment) That was certainly a shock to me. Not sure how April feels about it as she's kept her views to herself. I think. She's made a few comments going both ways but I think she's just confused a bit herself. She's torn between what she's been taught for 10 years (she's gone to a private catholic school her whole school life) to me urging her to read both sides and make an informed decision. I don't care how she votes (ok I care) but I'd rather her make an informed decision and be mindful of other's freedom to disagree - as long as its civil!
Julie what do you mean by voting machine
Don't you just put a X in the square of the one you want to vote for and then put the ballot paper into a locked box ??
Here - in SoCal, we have a paper check in roster, then we are handed a long paper ballot which we slide into a "form holder". We anchor it into place and on top of it is a preprinted voting ballot with a slot left out through which you "mark" your vote. We now use an ink dot method. Think Bingo cards where you "dot" your square. Then, after your done, you go back and check to make sure you marked all your choices then you proceed to the voting ballot box where a young thing tears off a paper receipt tells you to open your long retangular voting ballot which is about 1 ft long and 5 inches wide (more or less) and then you slide it into an ATM type of machine which then sucks in the ballot. She is sitting behind a screen that then tells her if you are good to go or not. We as the voter do not get to see what it says but I assume its either a go as in ok or a red as in somethings wrong.
Then, if all goes as planned, you get your little oval
"I Voted" sticker to which you then affix to your person or item on you to let others know that you have voted (and are secretly better then them for voting so fast
) It is also a good reminder and serves as a prodder for making others go and vote.
Where is Carolyn when you need her google assistance?
We also use voting machines. You go in the machine (which is about 7 feet tall), draw the curtain around you and press down on the levers to register your votes. Once you are done you push a button at the bottom and that makes sure your votes are registered and clears the levers so the machine is ready for the next voter. At the end of the night there is a register that is taken out of the back of the machine and turned into the elections office so all votes from each machine can be counted.
Before you can get into the machine to vote one of the election workers pulls out a piece of paper with your info on it and then verifies that it matches the info on your license. That takes some time, so another reason for the long lines of people.
I worked a school board election one year so I got to see the process from start to finish.
Every state has their own types of machines or systems for voting - it's not universal across the 50 states.
Yup - I gave Southern CA's procedures above.
No, here in NYC at least, there are big machines you walk into behind a curtain once you have signed in, then you pull a big lever to one side to begin voting, then pull levers to make a check next to the names of those you choose to vote for, and at the end, pull the big lever back over to record your vote. They let Meredith go in with me and do the actual pulling of levers for me, which she loved. Let me see if I can find some online photos of what it is like, at least here.
We had the electronic voting dial machines. We early voted and waited in line an hour. Today I drove by three different polling places and they had no lines at all!
Does your state have early voting?
What type of machine do you use?
Texas--early voting, electronic dial
We do early voting but I don't trust it - unless I'm going to be out of the country - gives me something to do on election day.
Hi All
Ive been pretty busy as of late.
Voted today fill in the dots optical scanner type of ballot!
Walked in walked out!
I walked my dog past my voting poll place which is about a 3 minute walk from my house. There were not lines but of course by the time I take the Diva Dog back and get my pamphlet, I have to get into the only line with a line. This particular polling place had two sections of neighborhood - the orange line and the green line. I was a green and of course there were about 8 people in front of me and the guy checking people in was too busy flirting with the voters to get his behind moving otherwise, I would have been in and out in less than 3 minutes. I think it took me about 2 minutes to find the dots, ink them and then 1 minute to go over to make sure I inked them.
It took me 25 minutes to vote, that's including travel time both ways. I would have been home sooner had I not gotten behind a slowpoke on the way home.
We don't do early voting in DE unless you are going to be out of state.
Push button machine.
Wow! You got slowpokes too? Lots of them around here and they are usually in front of me.
Today, I woke up to grey, coolness, the ground wet from a rainstorm and yet it was still 69 degrees. I can't imagine being out on the East Coast standing in line for hours. I would vote early if I could or make sure I went during school hours or working hours. I'd take the cut in pay just to avoid the lines later.
Most places out here will allow an employee to be late to work for voting purposes. Or to leave early. Of course, unless you work for a Japanese company and then they expect you vote on your own time. Sorry folks, I worked for one for over 10 years and prior to me, they never had an employee go to jury duty and or take off early or come in late because of voting. I guess my standards were just a bit different from the majority of the employees at the time. Then after several saw me "get away" with it - they stood up for their turn. Just call me a trouble maker.
Anyway, for me, it was a bit painless - other then the flirter but that was during school hours. I can't begin to imagine what it will be like later this evening.
JULIE - I didn't realize your oldest is 18. Good for her for voting - I'm having to bribe my son to vote. Whatever I have to do to het him there. I fear I have failed miserably with my oldest girl, she failed to register.
I'll get her next year to sign up.
OH YEAH! CA polls close at 8 pm.
I wonder if we would be so lucky as to be visited again? What do you think our chances are?
Our precent has 1,917 reg voters and 860 voted. I was 186 at 9 AM. Our PTO made $450 on the bake sale. 
