I had know I idea those were still in use. The only time I voted on one of those was in 1996, in my first election.
So, a couple things. I saw a sign on the way to the polls. I thought it was one of the red on top blue on bottom trump signs. Instead it read, “Any Functioning Adult. 2024.” I laughed. I stood in line for 20 min. First Time Ever.
My daughter went to vote same precinct. The guy handing out the little ballot applicaton, was regaling the voters (outside the door to the building thus out of hearing of the other poll workers) how there had already been ten million fraudulent votes. 
I assume so. The machine self-stored the completed ballots, so as far as I could tell, no present poll worker touched the paper.
Yes, but it really only takes a few seconds per voter to feed the ballot in and wait for the machine to confirm it could read it, or spit it out as erroneous. (Stray marks or an over-vote get an error. A completely blank ballot gets a warning. Yes, some people go to the polls and intentionally vote a completely blank ballot. But not many.
I was simplifying. There were two parallel sets of sign-ins per precinct. It was more than 2 poll workers sitting there to accomplish that. But they could process two voters simultaneously, to keep the line moving along.
Are you sure they’ve figured that out?
Voted around 10:30 this morning and only had a short wait. My polling location is rarely busy (I usually vote during peak times and have never waited) but apparently there had been quite the rush earlier. They were already out of “I Voted” stickers. The older gentleman in front of me was quite upset when he found out.
We signed up to have our ballots mailed to us, starting with this go-round; voted early in 2020 as well. No risk of having to stand in line that way, something which we would rather not do nowadays lest our backs complain.
We are a nation of toddlers.
That encouraged straight-party voting. Now, in Pa., even straight party voters have to vote for each office individually. I wonder if other states still have some big level equivalent.
Personally, I think encouraging straight party voting is a mistake. Even Gov. Shapiro did not endorse all Democrats (he made no endorsement for State Treasurer). But the big lever was convenient when that was what I wanted.
P.S. Maybe you meant that in addition to the moderately big level for a straight party vote, there also was a much bigger level at the bottom to finalize and exit. I just remembered that.
Twenty-two months per federal regulations. State retention schedules can require longer, but 22 months is the minimum amount of time allowed before destruction. (Yavapai County microfilms the ballots and keeps them for-fucking-ever because nobody is willing to authorize destruction)
Kentucky had the presidential election, two downballot republicans who were running unopposed, and amendments for school choice (no) and whether noncitizens should be allowed to vote in local elections (yes)
My daughter just made a FB posting including a photo of the voting station she is working at today. She reported that it was fairly quiet, no lines and no problems so far. She is in Park Slope, Brooklyn, NY.
From Minnesota: We went at 1:00 PM, hoping to avoid long lines. Our polling place happened to be at our church lower-level, so we knew where to park and enter from the lower lot. Lots of signs and directions.
No one in front of us, and one of our neighbors checked us in. Two-sided ballot, so they had someone explain that we had to turn it over before we got the ballot. The paper fill-in-the-circles ballot had TURN BALLOT OVER on both sides. (When I was teaching a college class I had a double-sided test, and had to add that warning after I had students claim they only did one side. Sigh.)
The back side was judges, mostly unopposed; they marked Incumbent on some names, which helped.
A state amendment, school bond referendum, school board seats, city council, state representatives, US rep and senate, and president. I marked the back first, then bottom-up to the exciting races. Put the paper ballot into a validator and got my I voted sticker. Seven minutes.
In Aus, for all elections state and federal, we have cardboard booths and cardboard boxes into which we place our ballot papers (folded) once we have voted. The ballot paper for the House of Reps is quite small with perhaps 5-10 candidates to choose from. The ballot for the Senate can have up to 100 names! You can choose to fill out your selection giving each candidate a number from 1 to how ever many choices to pick from, or just pick ONE and leave the rest unmarked.
And we are only allowed to use black-lead pencils to fill in our ballot sheets. 
I can only imagine how devastating it was for him that he couldn’t post a selfie wearing the sticker on Facebook.
Or at least I really want to believe that’s why he was so upset.
Indeed. Important matters at stake, here!
In more encouraging news, I just saw the results of an exit poll in Arizona, where 68% of voters indicated that if their candidate lost, they did not want to contest the results. Bit of an improvement over 2020…
Yeah, but you also get a free sausage. We can’t even get that.
Or maybe he didn’t want to spend the day being harrangued by political activists trying to take him to the polling booths because patently he’d forgotten being old, addled and showing his dotage, rather than having the visual cue of protection from a “Fuck off, I’ve voted sticker”.
I say learn from countries that manage to hold elections in a much more basic manner. Dyed fingers for everyone.
I like early voting, which doesn’t work with dyed fingers. But it is a solid system.