In California, both the sample ballot and the voter information pamphlet detailing the propositions very prominently feature the Voter’s Bill of Rights. Item #3 explicitly says you have “the right to vote if you are still in line when the polls close”.
There are also signs at the voting centers.
But there are many first class letters that never get postmarked or that don’t receive a legible postmark date. I hope I don’t have to read post-election day coverage of local postal workers in Democratic enclaves reporting that supervisors’ orders were to not postmark envelopes on election day.
Best advice is to either get your ballot delivered before election day or vote in person if you want it to get counted. I read somewhere but I can’t confirm that Biden’s website now recommends that people vote in person. This administration is not above shenanigans to prevent late-arriving mail-in ballots from counting.
This may happen, or poll workers may try to make it happen. I can’t find any actual instances of it in a quick search, though, so if you have some cites I’d like to see them.
Again, doing this is illegal. If you are in line at closing you have the right to vote.
Was one of the Fountain Hills? I love the idea of my Arpaio’s Posse member neighbor across the street having to wait in line because he was too stubborn to vote by mail. My vote was mailed the day I received the ballot, confirmed as received, signature verified, and counted.
Maricopa County also lets you drop off a mail -n ballot at any polling location on election day, doesn’t have to be your polling location. No standing in line (unless there is a line for the drop box). I did this in 2016.
No cite, sorry — I just remember such cases popping up in the election night newsfeeds, certainly more than once or twice.
As far as I know, the incident I personally witnessed wasn’t reported anywhere public. I did report it to the Election Protection group I was volunteering with.
I’m amazed by stories of long lines of people waiting to vote. Where I live, voting before I go to work, I pull into a mostly deserted parking lot wondering if I confused the date. I walk in, vote, walk out, and sometimes there will be another voter pulling into the lot.
I bet you vote on a paper ballot, and not in an urban area. I think long lines come from slow thruput of voting machines (you need to wait for someone else to finish, each time) and from densely crowded areas.
I’ve never had to wait long when I voted with a paper ballot, because “privacy booths” are cheap as dirt, and they had many more than needed. So one slow voter who needed to find the scrap of paper he wrote his choices on, or flip a coin 20 times, or whatever, has zero impact on the other voters.
Voting machines (normally) in suburbans town. Never takes more than 15 minutes. The waits are typically a city thing.
When I lived in Princeton, NJ, a wealthy suburban town, we had really long lines to vote. I blame the voting machines, because that was the rate-limiting factor. In towns with paper ballots the rate-limiting factor has been getting authenticated by the old ladies who hand out ballots, and even when one of them is really old, and slow, I’ve never had much of a line.
But perhaps NJ has more people per polling station than other places I’ve lived.
When I lived in Manhattan I was in a low-turnout district, and the lines were short. But I still had to wait because the voting machines were the old mechanical ones, and they are pretty hard to use. Each voter had to figure out how to use the machine before actually casting their ballot. I didn’t wait long, because there were never more than 3 people in line before me. But I probably waited 15-30 minutes for those 3 people to vote and clear the machine.
I’ve lived in 4 suburban towns in Monmouth County (NJ) and whether paper, mechanical or electronic, the polling has never taken long. the towns ranged from lower middle class to wealthy.
I have no clue why Princeton of all places was poorly run. That’s a bit shocking to me.
I have no shortage of relatives that lived in NYC and all complained of the lines for bigger elections.
Any idea/experience how polls might staff this? I understood there to be a shortage of poll workers this year. Wonder if there will be staff to assure folk in line that they will be able to vote, and to ensure that late comers do not line up.
Indeed, one was, and I had the exact same thought – Arpaio is somewhere in FH as well.
Yes you can, but there are no ‘polling locations’ this year, there are ‘voting locations’ – if you haven’t voted you can waltz into any one where, thanks to the magic of technology, the poll workers can determine whether you’ve voted anywhere else and print out your ballot if you have not. If one is a block away from you at work, you can vote there instead of the one close to your home.
I haven’t checked to see if it’s on-line yet but on election day (at least) the registrar’s website will have the voting locations’ wait time, kind of like the MVD did back in the day. I’m hoping the Trumpets in the three affected areas will be too dumb to know this. I’m also hoping a few of them decide to “test the system” like Donnie Two-scoops suggested in North Carolina. It’s a felony in Arizona to vote more than once in an election, even in another state – and they do check.
To clarify, just in case, though I’m sure it’s what you meant: this is going to vary state by state (and maybe even locality to locality, I don’t know.) In NYState I believe you still have to show up at your assigned polling place, which may be different for early voting than if you vote on the 3rd.
In my location in Florida, you can show up anywhere in the county if you’re early voting but have to show up at your assigned place if you vote day of (keeping in mind of course that it absolutely does vary by state.)
True. I don’t know if any other counties in Arizona – never mind the country – are doing the same. I can’t imagine Greenlee county (pop. 9,500) doing anything so elaborate, even if it could afford to do so.
Edit: The ad at the bottom is saying No Regrets - Vote Republican
That might actually be the same here, I’m not sure. In low-population counties such as mine, there’s only one early voting site for the whole county; so for me it wouldn’t make any difference. I don’t know whether in higher-population counties, which do have multiple early-voting sites, you can show up at any one as long as it’s the right county.
That almost qualifies as a Stupid Republican Idea Of The Day. I can’t decide if the too-on-the-nose reference to a notorious misspeller or the fact that they spelled it “Regrets” is stupider.
One problem in this thread is that people are talking about one the law is and how things were handled in past elections. I would make a strong effort to vote early (either using early voting or getting to the precinct early) this year because I expect there to be some severe issues at places with long lines. I think that in various places we’ll see some of Trump’s ‘militia’ protestors showing up and attempting to intimidate people into going home, provacateurs stirring up enough trouble that police decide to order people in the area to disperse, weird last-minute judicial rulings, and more. Not everywhere by any stretch of the imagination, but I definitely don’t expect election day to go smoothly.
Very informative site-- gives poll closing times and when votes can/will be counted, etc.