# Fox: 102 year old woman had to wait in line 3 hours to vote, "What's the big deal?" **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [February 15, 2013, 2:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380 "2013-02-15T14:15:13Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 21
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 4:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/401 "2013-02-19T16:43:52Z")
An overwhelming majority of naturalizations are family-related. I forget the exact number but it’s something like 75%. In theory, you can also be sponsored by your work to have job skills unique but really, it’s all about family. So… anchor babies and all that. Also, “speak the language” doesn’t even begin to fly since there is no official language. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/402 "2013-02-19T16:50:51Z")
That was pretty damn cold, **Debaser**. She arrived in 1989, to reunite her family, and thereupon made the emotional commitment to be an American - which is a step that many \*natives \*never take. Now: If only the excessive waits (up to \*seven \*hours!) were randomly distributed, then the easy dismissals we see here might carry some weight. [But 'tain’t so.](http://tv.msnbc.com/2013/02/12/meet-desiline-victor-the-102-year-old-voter-attending-the-sotu/) > [@](#): > > Others in her state waited as many as seven hours to vote, and according to analysis from an Ohio State University professor, about 200,000 voters gave up and left because of those waits. > .. > A recent analysis by MIT found that, nationwide, minorities waited nearly twice as long to cast their ballots than their white counterparts, while urban voters waited more than twice as long as rural voters. Anybody other than the completely-predictable \*\*Bricker \*\*willing to call that a mere unfortunate coincidence? :dubious: ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/403 "2013-02-19T16:55:55Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > That was pretty damn cold, **Debaser**. Yes. I think we should decide immigration policy based on our needs as a country, not what feels good in our hearts. There are lots of elderly people in Haiti and other hellholes around the world. Should we take them all in? > [@](#): > > She arrived in 1989, to reunite her family, and thereupon made the emotional commitment to be an American - which is a step that many \*natives \*never take. Got a cite? What was her immigration status from 1989 to 2005? ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 4:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/404 "2013-02-19T16:56:47Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > Why did we let this person become a citizen? We were hoping she’d leave us her money when she dies. I mean, we let her become an _ **American** _. She kind of owes us. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/405 "2013-02-19T17:06:11Z")
The question that needs be asked is: Why are the Democrats trying to make Haitian Creole the official language of the USA? And the answer is obvious! By printing all ballots in Haitian Creole, the Democrats hope to confuse and confound all those solid, God fearing Americans who do not read or understand the language. Those few people who do are reliably Democrat voters, unlike the vast majority of Americans who are stalwart Republicans. Thus, by this simple expedient, the Democrats hope to effectively disenfranchise real Americans, and hope that nobody notices when voter turnout shrinks to .014 percent of the population! I demand that anyone who, at any time, has said anything mean about me come directly to this thread and grovel in public apology and further, denounce, renounce and condemn this treacherous and un-American plot! ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 5:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/406 "2013-02-19T17:06:25Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > No. If we had an entire nation in which wait times did not exceed an hour, and one voter whose wait time DID exceed an hour, THAT, by definition, is a statistical outlier. WRONG. Please learn something about statistics before you talk about it. You’re really making me wince here. Not to mention, you’re switching back and forth between one thing and another. And it would help if you could write clearly. Take your statement, “insisting on a system in which not a single voter waits 3 hours IS a statistical outlier – by definition” which I pointed out earlier was wrong. Since you couldn’t have reasonably meant that the _insistence_ was an outlier (I’ll explain why later if you can’t grok that), you presumably meant that “a system in which not a single voter waits 3 hours IS a statistical outlier – by definition” which is false as I explained earlier: its truth or falsity would be determined by comparison with other systems. Now, ‘outlier’ isn’t a formal concept in statistics, even though the term has been around for a half-century. [As Wikipedia correctly notes](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outlier#Identifying_outliers), “There is no rigid mathematical definition of what constitutes an outlier; determining whether or not an observation is an outlier is ultimately a subjective exercise.” There are a number of tests for identifying outliers, but they don’t all give you the same set of outliers. So the whole idea that something is **an outlier by definition** has a fundamental problem. But back to your statement: > [@](#): > > If we had an entire nation in which wait times did not exceed an hour, and one voter whose wait time DID exceed an hour, THAT, by definition, is a statistical outlier. Why is this wrong, by pretty much any reasonable definition of outlier? Simple: because it’s easy to construct a distribution where there are a number of wait times just under an hour, and one wait time just over an hour - where the highest measurement just happens to be barely on the other side of an arbitrary line from the measurement that’s the second-highest measurement. Since there’s always such a line (unless those two measurements are identical), what you’re saying is that the highest and lowest measurements in a distribution are outliers by definition. That’s pretty silly by itself, but consider that a standard approach to dealing with outliers is to toss them. So you toss out your highest and lowest measurements because they’re outliers, and then the new highest and lowest measurements are outliers. Toss them because they’re outliers. Lather, rinse, repeat until you have nothing left. ETA: I find your insistence on clarity in your back-and-forth with **MsWhatsit** to be quite amusing. Counselor, please heal thyself. 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![pancakes3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ba9def/32.png) [@pancakes3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pancakes3)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 5:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/407 "2013-02-19T17:08:42Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > Anybody other than the completely-predictable \*\*Bricker \*\*willing to call that a mere unfortunate coincidence? :dubious: I’m not sure about the point you’re driving at. Coincidence that… urban voters and minority voters experience longer waiting times? Or just coincidence that minority voters experience longer voting times? It sounds like you answered your own question… ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 5:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/408 "2013-02-19T17:15:32Z")
> [@elucidator](#): > > The question that needs be asked is: Why are the Democrats trying to make Haitian Creole the official language of the USA? And the answer is obvious! > > By printing all ballots in Haitian Creole, the Democrats hope to confuse and confound all those solid, God fearing Americans who do not read or understand the language. Those few people who do are reliably Democrat voters, unlike the vast majority of Americans who are stalwart Republicans. Thus, by this simple expedient, the Democrats hope to effectively disenfranchise real Americans, and hope that nobody notices when voter turnout shrinks to .014 percent of the population! > > I demand that anyone who, at any time, has said anything mean about me come directly to this thread and grovel in public apology and further, denounce, renounce and condemn this treacherous and un-American plot! **bup’s** sarcastic and content free post was better than yours. He also beat you by ten minutes. You are getting slow in your old age. Plus this is probably the longest post of yours I’ve ever seen. You should really try to keep it to one line. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 5:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/409 "2013-02-19T17:22:40Z")
> [@pancakes3](#): > > I’m not sure about the point you’re driving at. ..It sounds like you answered your own question… I think you’ve got it. 😉 BTW, Desiline Victor \*already \*speaks one of the primary languages of the Miami area. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 5:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/410 "2013-02-19T17:23:29Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > You should really try to keep it to one line. That’s one line longer than your optimal post. (Hey, you set yourself up for it. Who was I to pass up the opportunity? :D) ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/411 "2013-02-19T17:26:45Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > Yes. I think we should decide immigration policy based on our needs as a country, not what feels good in our hearts. There are lots of elderly people in Haiti and other hellholes around the world. Should we take them all in? What happened to all those pious “family values” sermons we used to get from your side? Oh, well, OK - just give us an estimate of how much it’s cost you personally to have her here, and we’ll set up a compensation fund for you, OK? 😃 > [@](#): > > Got a cite? What was her immigration status from 1989 to 2005? It would have to be resident alien, of course. Your point, please? ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/412 "2013-02-19T17:33:03Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > That’s one line longer than your optimal post. > > (Hey, you set yourself up for it. Who was I to pass up the opportunity? :D) Heh. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 5:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/413 "2013-02-19T17:35:08Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > What happened to all those pious “family values” sermons we used to get from your side? What family did she have here? I honestly don’t know. You claim to. Share the wealth. You know, fight ignorance. > [@](#): > > It would have to be resident alien, of course. Your point, please? Do you have a cite for this? For anything you are posting regarding her history from 1989 to 2005? ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 5:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/414 "2013-02-19T17:40:34Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > What family did she have here… You know, fight ignorance. If you can’t be arsed to click on a damn link, that’s nobody else’s problem but your own. > [@](#): > > Do you have a cite for this? For anything you are posting regarding her history from 1989 to 2005? A. What the fuck else could it be? and B. Why the fuck does it matter? Isn’t the problem really that she’s, you know, the sort of person you don’t want voting? Come on now. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/415 "2013-02-19T17:47:04Z")
Getting back from standards for new citizens to problems with voting, here’s a rather interesting [article about voter fraud investigations in Hamilton County, Ohio](http://news.cincinnati.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/201302150522/NEWS/302150193&nclick_check=1) (Cincinnati area). Seems that most of the handful of potential instances of what they thought might be fraud had to do with people who got an absentee ballot and either weren’t sure if they’d sent it in, were told that they’d put insufficient postage on it so it wouldn’t get there, or similar snafus. So once again, actual voter fraud turns out to be negligible. But it does suggest that voting by mail still has a few (fortunately fairly minor) bugs to be worked out in some places. ---
**Author:** ![Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e8c25b/32.png) [@Really\_Not\_All\_That\_Bright](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Really_Not_All_That_Bright)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/416 "2013-02-19T17:53:27Z")
> [@Debaser](#): > > For anything you are posting regarding her history from 1989 to 2005? She could only have been a lawful permanent resident, a refugee, or a sponsored non-resident. Otherwise she wouldn’t have been eligible for citizenship. ---
**Author:** ![ElvisL1ves](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@ElvisL1ves](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ElvisL1ves)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 5:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/417 "2013-02-19T17:53:39Z")
Just to throw the “You guys do it too! Or would, if you had the chance” types here a bone: [Here’s a case of voter fraud by a Democrat](http://www.boston.com/metrodesk/2012/12/20/mass-lawmaker-will-plead-guilty-voter-fraud/g9cBs3OJdeGsaSa9EmUiRI/story.html). And he’s going to jail for it. Unfortunately for the transparent ID-law argument, it involves absentee ballots, which would not be affected at all by the law that the predictable predictably insist are “reasonable”. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 5:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/418 "2013-02-19T17:56:12Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Can you point to a single instance of my doing that to someone who hadn’t first made similar or worse attacks against me? > > Is it really the rules of engagement here that others are free to hurl invective, make snide remarks, or call me vile names, and I must respond with continual and unfailing politeness? [sarcasm]Yes, that’s obviously the point. There’s a double standard, and we treat you so unfairly[/sarcasm] Look at posts 43 and 48 of this thread. **Gangster Octopus** makes a statement that you go out of your way to interpret in a preposterously extreme fashion, which you then use to pass judgment on liberals as a group. > [@](#): > > And yet none of them are defusing this tactic by replying NOW to disclaim their literal claims. Why is that? Beats me, I’m not them. But I really doubt that the answer is “because they honestly believed that their extreme position was correct, but then you defeated them with your logic, and now they realize that the position they honestly held was wrong but are too weaselly to admit it, so they have slunk away in shame” or “they still honestly believe in a caricature of an extreme position”. More likely they just don’t care, or were turned off by the tenor of the thread, or any of a thousand other reasons why people don’t post things in threads. I’ve had this argument with you many times before, but trying to draw conclusions about people based on things they do not post is pretty tenuous. > [@](#): > > Would that it were so. A disagreement still exists because there are people here who still literally believe that even one who has to wait over three hours represents a failure that must be fixed. Now you’re the one using ambiguous language… (which of course is part of the problem with this issue, it’s very very hard to be really precise about without zillions of qualifications). If we vote tomorrow and in one precinct a bunch of things go wrong and there are three hour wait times, then certainly things IN THAT PRECINCT went wrong, and IN THAT PRECINCT there was a failure that at least SHOULD be fixed, and hopefully there won’t be three hour wait times in that precinct next election – while at the same time a failure in that precinct does not in and of itself prove that the entire system is broken. So do I “still literally believe that even one who has to wait over three hours represents a failure that must be fixed”? Beats me, without further haggling over the precise meanings of words like “failure”, “must” and “be fixed”. My point being that you’re hanging your hat on your right to assign extremely precise and literal meanings to things people said in presumably hastily-constructed SDMB posts, when in fact even fairly straightforward sounding descriptions of positions on this issue, such as the one you just made, are rife with difficult-to-avoid ambiguity. ---
**Author:** ![Debaser](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/3da27b/32.png) [@Debaser](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Debaser)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/419 "2013-02-19T18:22:14Z")
> [@ElvisL1ves](#): > > If you can’t be arsed to click on a damn link, that’s nobody else’s problem but your own. What link? You are making claims without backing them up. I don’t even doubt what you were saying, it is plausible. I just wanted more information, you obviously came up with that " to reunite her family, and thereupon made the emotional commitment to be an American" from somewhere. I simply asked where you got that from so I could read it for myself. Post the fucking link or shut the fuck up. For fucks sake. > [@](#): > > Isn’t the problem really that she’s, you know, the sort of person you don’t want voting? Come on now. Yes, generally speaking, the fact that the sort of illiterate third world non English speaking criminals who we let into the country by the millions tend to vote Democrat is one of the reasons I’m opposed to letting them in. I’ve never denied that. ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 19, 2013, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/420 "2013-02-19T18:26:08Z")
> [@MaxTheVool](#): > > Look at posts 43 and 48 of this thread. **Gangster Octopus** makes a statement that you go out of your way to interpret in a preposterously extreme fashion, which you then use to pass judgment on liberals as a group. No, _no!_ \*\*Bricker \*\*claims that he’s really just talking about liberals _on this board_ as a group. By some bit of alchemy, on this board, it’s the conservatives who are the party of facts and reason, and liberals who expect government to provide magical ponies, sayeth **Bricker** , even though Out There it’s exactly the opposite. We Doper libruls should all hang our heads due to our failure to be as worthy as our off-board political allies. 😉 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380.md?page=20) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380.md?page=22)