Got 'er did.

[Darryl Hattenhauer]

mando,

Why is it so bad there?

hf

 

[dapmdave]

mando,

Why is it so bad there?

hf

I'm wondering the same thing. What IS the deal down there, anyway? Makes the rest of us look like morons. :lol:

Dave

 

[Darryl Hattenhauer]

Makes the rest of us look like morons.

It could be worse, Dap. You could look like Arizonans.

 

[geoguy]

I can't understand these extended waits for voting, either.

My town has about 25,000 residents, & we all vote in the high-school gym. There are 8 precincts, essentially just 8 rows of voting booths in the gym. Three poll workers at the beginning of your precinct ask for your name & address, & then hand you a paper ballot.

A few steps forward & you have something like 30 booths to choose from. Maybe half were occupied when I was there, around 6:30pm (big crowd after work). Five minutes to mark the ballot, check-out with a couple different poll workers, & feed your ballot into a scanning machine.

Took longer to find a parking place than to vote. It does help if you're prepared, & not reading the ballot questions for the first time in the voting booth.

 

[fronobulax]

The Virginia polling location that stayed open four more hours to accommodate the people in line is local. There seem to be three factors involved. For reasons that I have not seen discussed publicly there were only six voting machines and apparently no paper ballots. The turn out was higher than anticipated. The ballot had two VA constitutional amendments that were, IMO, not well publicized beforehand. There is a County Supervisor calling for an investigation as to why there were only six machines. My guess is that the Board of Elections was not granted the funding they asked the Board of Supervisors for and some poor election official made what now seems to be the wrong decision in allocating the "scarce resource" of voting machines.

While there are people complaining of attempted voter suppression I've always favored simple incompetence over conspiracy theories in cases like this.

 

[dapmdave]

The ballot in Florida this time around had a lot of constitutional amendments and other local issues. My ballot was four dense pages, but I've seen reports of up to 12 pages in other parts of the state.

And, when considering Florida and Arizona, what do we share? A lot of folks for whom English is either a second language or worse. And a lot of Q-tips. Could be a factor... I don't know.

Dave

 

[kitniyatran]

mando,

Why is it so bad there?

hf

I'm wondering the same thing. What IS the deal down there, anyway? Makes the rest of us look like morons. :lol:

Dave

Part of the problem in my precinct was that three precincts were condensed into one, but the real problems were only one machine to scan the ballots at most, if not all, locations, machines jamming when ballots were inserted, lengthy, multi-page ballots with a bunch of constitutional amendments for issues that should not have been constitutional matters, and, apparently, higher than expected voter turn out. This despite 8 days of people waiting 2 - 3 hours in line for early voting, and many choosing to use absentee ballots. A few locations had no, or minimal waiting lines, however, but they were apparently in the minority.

 

[Darryl Hattenhauer]

A few locations had no, or minimal waiting lines

What kinds of districts were those in? (Urban v suburbs v rural, rich v poor, White v Black v Latino, Dem v Rep, etc.)

 

[bluesypicky]

Absentee ballots. In the mail. Wait time: 0
They sent us the confirmation upon reception.

 

[kitniyatran]

A few locations had no, or minimal waiting lines

What kinds of districts were those in? (Urban v suburbs v rural, rich v poor, White v Black v Latino, Dem v Rep, etc.)

The ones I heard about were just seemingly random polling places in my town, one right in the old part of town,another near the north edge of town. Nothing special that I know of about either; mix of all mentioned, as far as I know.

 

[Ross]

Steffan,

That sounds like a good law to me.

hf

Yes, it's good for anyone working long shifts.
Polls stay open until 8 or 9 pm, so 9-to-5ers still have their mandated 3 hours without missing a minute of work! :lol: