My voting experience this morning

[_EAllusion]

I didn't have to wait at all, easy peasy. I was quite impressed by the new voting machines, too. Flashed DL. Gave me a blank ballet. Insert into machine. Make my selections. It prints them onto my ballot, which I can visually check. I take my ballot and insert it into another machine which scans it and then drops it into a lock box. Cake.

That seems like a solid system. I have no complaints with ours. It's a simple, easy to read and follow scantron ballot fed into a tabulator.

[_Res Ipsa]

In Washington state our ballots are mailed to us. I put mine in a local box a couple of days ago. No wait involved. In the past, some years ago now, we went to a local voting location on election day. There were always enough voting locations that one would have to wait for only three or four people or less to vote.

I think people who live in states with serious waits and problems should make a real fuss to push the state for better arrangements.

Yep. Dropped mine in the local box last night so it would be counted tonight. I do miss going to the polls to vote. (Never had to wait more than a couple minutes.) But I do love how easy it is to vote for everyone. You don’t even need a stamp.

[_Analytics]

I didn't have to wait at all, easy peasy. I was quite impressed by the new voting machines, too. Flashed DL. Gave me a blank ballet. Insert into machine. Make my selections. It prints them onto my ballot, which I can visually check. I take my ballot and insert it into another machine which scans it and then drops it into a lock box. Cake. The only way they could maybe improve things and make it even more transparent would be to publish the results online so that I could double-check that the machine scanned it properly.

My experience was similar to this, although not exact. Differences:

1- They didn't look at my drivers license--they inserted into a device that ran the bar code and QR code on the back and compared it to the state's database. While they had it inserted into their device, they asked me to verbally state my name and address, which they checked against what was showing up on their screen. They then compared the photo on the ID to my face and returned it to me. In general, this was tighter security than TSA--no voter ID fraud in Kansas.

That machine printed out a "ticket" for me to vote, which the worker scanned into my voting booth. There, I inserted my blank ballot--a completely blank piece of heavy stock paper, perhaps 3" by 15". I made the selections on the computer monitor, and it printed it all onto the ballot in English and bar codes. After visually inspecting it, I inserted it back into the same machine in the booth that printed it, and pushed a button on the screen to cast the ballot. Done.

It was about 10 minutes total from car door to car door at 8:30 A.M. at a rural church in Kansas, 25 miles outside of Kansas City. I always presumed my district was as solidly Republican as one could imagine, but a rookie politician who is a lesbian native-American professional MMA fighter has an 85% chance of eliminating the Republican incumbent.

Things are changing in Kansas.

[Guest]

I always find these stories surprising. I vote when I drop my kids off at school around 8am, and I've never had to wait in line. Historically, I've been voting since 1992, in Sacramento and Los Angeles, and I've never had to wait longer than a few minutes. I've voted at schools, community centers, at Denny's, and in people's garages. It's always the same. Whether in the morning or afternoon, just a few people waiting. I've thought about voting by mail, but it's easier for me to just vote in person than to bother mailing it in.

This morning there were three other people there (we were outnumbered by polling place workers). Plenty of empty booths. I was in an out in minutes.

I also passed two polling locations at different schools on my way to work and didn't see any signs of a line outside of them.

So it's definitely odd that people are having such different experiences. But the lines are hardly a universal thing.

[_Dr Exiled]

I voted early and it took me 10 minutes. There weren't any lines either.

[_Kevin Graham]

I'm in Georgia where the Governorship is in toss-up status, and our county has a population of a few hundred thousand, so that probably helps explain the longer wait times.

[_cinepro]

I'm in Georgia where the Governorship is in toss-up status, and our county has a population of a few hundred thousand, so that probably helps explain the longer wait times.

Yes, there isn't much suspense in California voting. I even voted for Feinstein!

[_EAllusion]

I'm in Georgia where the Governorship is in toss-up status, and our county has a population of a few hundred thousand, so that probably helps explain the longer wait times.

There are so many stories of polling location irregularities and absurd wait times pouring out of Georgia at the moment. On the one hand ,this might simply be because journalists are hyper-attuned to the issue because of the baked-in awareness of Kemp's attempts at voter suppression. On the other hand, your state might have some screwed up voting systems. This of course is rich because the person in charge of them is on the ballot and stands to benefit, not suffer from this.

[_Themis]

I considered voting but then decided I didn't care that much whether we go for the Olympics or not.

[_Kevin Graham]

I'm in Georgia where the Governorship is in toss-up status, and our county has a population of a few hundred thousand, so that probably helps explain the longer wait times.

There are so many stories of polling location irregularities and absurd wait times pouring out of Georgia at the moment. On the one hand ,this might simply be because journalists are hyper-attuned to the issue because of the baked-in awareness of Kemp's attempts at voter suppression. On the other hand, your state might have some screwed up voting systems. This of course is rich because the person in charge of them is on the ballot and stands to benefit, not suffer from this.

This library I spoke of is where they had early voting all of last week and I drove by every day and saw a huge line and several residents said the waits were 3-4 hours long, and this was just during early voting period.

My Mom said that older people were allowed to skip the lines and vote first, which blew my mind because we all know who older people tend to vote for. I wondered if this was something unique to Georgia or if this were a policy across the country to allow elderly folks to skip the lines.