# 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:** 4
**Author:** ![redtail23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3e96dc/32.png) [@redtail23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/redtail23)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/61 "2013-02-15T18:07:00Z")
**Bricker** - what the hell good does it do for a voter to know how long the lines were last year when they’ve deliberately screwed with the system? In my precinct last year, I stood in line about 20 minutes. Others waited longer at peak times; the longest I heard was about 45 minutes, but I’ve got a fairly small precinct with lots of support. I’ve no idea what the actual “longest wait” was, nor exactly when it happened. We had early voting available on Friday, Saturday, and Monday prior to the election. In the city, there were people waiting in line to vote for several hours during early voting this year, as well as on voting day. Quite obviously if the early voting had not been available, lines would have been much longer on voting day, and most likely some voters would have decided not to wait. As I said earlier, in some elections prior to the institution of early voting, in my small precinct, I waited at least 3 hours, and others longer. So you tell me - how long should I have planned to wait if the voting board had decided to drop one day of early voting? Your premise, that the voters should be the experts and be able to forecast the results of Republican tampering, is fairly ridiculous. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/62 "2013-02-15T18:07:18Z")
> [@](#): > > …How do we balance the cost of the voting machines against the need for ease and convenience? Oh, so they tried, and it didn’t work? They worked really, really hard to try and fix the problem, but just couldn’t quite do it? Well, that certainly changes everything! You have some sort of cite for that, by any chance? ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/63 "2013-02-15T18:07:47Z")
> [@Giles](#): > > Are you suggesting that there was some sudden emergency in Victor’s case? That it wasn’t part of a state or county policy to create delays in Democrat-leaning precincts? I was responding to this language from post 11: > [@](#): > > Governor Rick Scott refused to extend early voting hours even when asked by county election supervisors – and Detzner, his secretary of state, rationalized this refusal by arguing that he was only allowed to extend early voting hours during a state of emergency, and “[f]ortunately, no such situation currently exists in the State of Florida.” However, past Republican governors found that prohibitively long voting lines met this standard and subsequently extended early voting hours. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/64 "2013-02-15T18:10:57Z")
> [@Gangster\_Octopus](#): > > You yourself pointed out that these wait times are endemic of Florida voting which means they are fucking up somewhat more generically than a broken machine here or there. The fact is these long waits are by design, not by accident. Or by lack of funding. Which brings me back to the question i asked above, and my use of hyperbolic examples to illustrate the issue. We can spend more money, and improve the experience. I think we should do that to some degree, because it’s clearly not optimal. But at the same time, i don’t agree that the solution is obvious or easy, in large measure because we don’t seem to have solid agreement on what lines cross “easy and convenient.” ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/65 "2013-02-15T18:13:15Z")
> [@redtail23](#): > > **Bricker** - what the hell good does it do for a voter to know how long the lines were last year when they’ve deliberately screwed with the system? > > In my precinct last year, I stood in line about 20 minutes. Others waited longer at peak times; the longest I heard was about 45 minutes, but I’ve got a fairly small precinct with lots of support. I’ve no idea what the actual “longest wait” was, nor exactly when it happened. Was your 20 minute wait as easy, or convenient, as possible? Should we work to improve that by spending more money to allocate more staff and more machines? Or is that a good standard? It seems to me that the first step in this process should be to reach an agreement about acceptable target metrics for the voting experience, cost out what it would take to get there, and then see if there’s the political will to do so. ---
**Author:** ![elucidator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8edcca/32.png) [@elucidator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/elucidator)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/66 "2013-02-15T18:14:28Z")
I am so ashamed. Here I was, blaming those poor Republicans, when all the time, they were working their little fingers to the bone, scratching their pointy little heads, just trying to come up with some solution, but just couldn’t quite do it! The poor dears. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/67 "2013-02-15T18:14:38Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Well, I said “to pick an absurd example,” simply to illustrate the vagueness of terms like “easy” and “convenient.” > > But here’s a more realistic one, since you apparently have problems with more inchoate analogy: how many voter machines should be assigned to a particular polling place? What factors should be considered in reaching that decision? > > I can go a long way in ensuring virtually no wait time, for example, if I decide to assign fifty machines to a polling place that historically has no more than 200 people per hour show up. > > But that’s a very expensive solution. Ten machines would seem to be acceptable, even though it might mean a short wait. Five machines might be enough, that 200 people per hour was linearly spread over the hour. But if 100 people show up inside ten minutes, there will be a wait, no matter what. > > How do we balance the cost of the voting machines against the need for ease and convenience? Such a pragmatist. The irony here is beyond comparison. **Bricker** is on record as being in favor of states spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement changes in voting regulations in order to address a problem that demonstrably does not exist. Now he’s the sensible steely eyed pragmatist who knows better than soft-headed liberals just how tight resources are so that they require tight allocation based on demonstrable need. Yeah, you’re fucking too smart for me, you little partisan bitch. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/68 "2013-02-15T18:16:00Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > .How do we balance the cost of the voting machines against the need for ease and convenience? > [@elucidator](#): > > Oh, so they tried, and it didn’t work? They worked really, really hard to try and fix the problem, but just couldn’t quite do it? Well, that certainly changes everything! You have some sort of cite for that, by any chance? How can I have a cite for a question? Or do you mean do I have a cite for YOUR claim? No, do your own research. The only citable claim in that post appears to be under the quote tag for “elucidator.” ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/69 "2013-02-15T18:16:29Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > This is also absurd. > > Certainly the average should never be three hours. Let’s do better than that, shall we? The _average_ should be well under _one_ hour. I’ve been voting for nearly 40 years, and I think I had to wait 10 minutes once. It’s not like this is an insoluble problem. > [@](#): > > But a huge, unexpected turnout, combined with an unexpected breakdown of a machine or two, could easily create a three hour wait. What’s to be done then? Shoot the elections volunteers? Any evidence of that “huge, unexpected turnout”? No, what we have evidence of is Florida officials cutting back substantially on early voting between 2008 and 2012. With fewer opportunities to vote, you’d have the same number of voters being stuffed into fewer voting hours. Longer lines during those fewer hours? What a fucking surprise, says **Bricker**! How could anyone have predicted such an outcome?! Shoot the election volunteers! God_damn_. > [@](#): > > My perception of liberals – often unfair, I’m sure – is that they are well-meaning people with very little concern for or understanding of practical reality. You know, I’m old enough to remember when there was some real truth to that perception. But that was a long time ago. I remember those days well because I was in my teens and 20s back then; I’m in my late 50s now. And it’s been obvious for quite some time now which party deals in facts, and which deals in theories and ideology, and doesn’t want to be bothered with mundane things like facts. So you’re just some guy whose worldview is 30+ years behind the times. Wake up, Rip, nobody plays ninepins anymore. > [@](#): > > Statements like the above confirm that perception. Certainly we should never regard a three hour wait as an acceptable standard. At the same time, we cannot possibly guarantee that it will never happen. No, but we should be able to guarantee that, barring your sudden, unexpected increase in turnout from one election of the same sort (Presidential year, midterm, primary, etc.) to the next, it should be (a) a rarity, rather than an all-too-commonplace as it was in 2012, and (b) an event that’s responded to, _regardless of partisan sentiments_, with efforts to make sure it doesn’t happen again, rather than ridiculing the entire notion that it might be a problem. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/70 "2013-02-15T18:17:09Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > Such a pragmatist. The irony here is beyond comparison. **Bricker** is on record as being in favor of states spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to implement changes in voting regulations in order to address a problem that demonstrably does not exist. > > Now he’s the sensible steely eyed pragmatist who knows better than soft-headed liberals just how tight resources are so that they require tight allocation based on demonstrable need. > > Yeah, you’re fucking too smart for me, you little partisan bitch. Again, this seems to be an ad hominem attack that doesn’t address any of the points I made. ---
**Author:** ![bup](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/6bbea6/32.png) [@bup](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bup)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/71 "2013-02-15T18:18:03Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > > [@Gangster Octopus](#): > > > > The point is it should never fucking take three hours to vote in this country. > > This is also absurd. > > Certainly the average should never be three hours. > > But a huge, unexpected turnout, combined with an unexpected breakdown of a machine or two, could easily create a three hour wait. What’s to be done then? Shoot the elections volunteers? Oh, fuck it, you know that’s not what he meant. Little ol’ Grandma Moses didn’t try to vote at a place where there was a sudden fire, or chasm that opened in the earth, or on a Carnival Cruise ship that spontaneously up-heaved feces through the deck floors. There are plenty of precincts in this country where the average waits are a few hours. They’re poor, heavily populated, and it’s not because of unforeseen emergencies. They’re always like this, and voters shouldn’t have to put up with it. Do you agree with that? Or will you create some other _reductio absurdum_ hypothetical and then talk about how there are reasonable points in the middle? Do you acknowledge that precincts with routinely multi-hour waits is not reasonable? ---
**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 15, 2013, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/72 "2013-02-15T18:18:06Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > Please point to where in the quoted text, or even on the linked page, which is the official page of the Florida Division of Elections, where it says that a person who can, or is able to, vote at a polling place can nevertheless request an absentee ballot. > > How is a voter who has sought information about absentee voting and has navigated their way to the official state website to know that it is not true that this applies to “a person who is unable or cannot go to the polls to vote during early voting or Election Day”? I volunteered with my county election supervisor this past election. The application forms, which are available from individual county election supervisors, do not require the applicant to identify any reason for the request. ---
**Author:** ![redtail23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3e96dc/32.png) [@redtail23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/redtail23)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/73 "2013-02-15T18:18:55Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > I was responding to this language from post 11: > [@](#): > > Governor Rick Scott refused to extend early voting hours even when asked by county election supervisors – and Detzner, his secretary of state, rationalized this refusal by arguing that he was only allowed to extend early voting hours during a state of emergency, and “[f]ortunately, no such situation currently exists in the State of Florida.” However, past Republican governors found that prohibitively long voting lines met this standard and subsequently extended early voting hours. That specifically says that past governors have extended _ **early** voting hours_, not Election Day voting hours. In other words, when the election supervisors see long lines during early voting, they ask for extensions to allow more people to vote early. This year, after PLANNED REDUCTIONS in early voting, the election supervisors asked for extended early voting hours, as have been granted previously. This governor refused to do so, thereby deliberately creating extra-long lines on Election Day. Which doesn’t even remotely resemble your claims that they wanted to extend hours on Election Day. I agree that wouldn’t help; if you’re in line by 7 and are willing to wait, you get to vote. Adding hours wouldn’t shorten the wait. ---
**Author:** ![redtail23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/3e96dc/32.png) [@redtail23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/redtail23)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/74 "2013-02-15T18:21:31Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Was your 20 minute wait as easy, or convenient, as possible? > > Should we work to improve that by spending more money to allocate more staff and more machines? Or is that a good standard? > > It seems to me that the first step in this process should be to reach an agreement about acceptable target metrics for the voting experience, cost out what it would take to get there, and then see if there’s the political will to do so. I was perfectly satisfied with my wait, thank you. Perhaps we could start by agreeing that deliberate interference with the election process by reducing previously available voting hours in transparent efforts to disenfranchise certain voters should be condemned. Can you get behind that? ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 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/650380/75 "2013-02-15T18:26:43Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Again, this seems to be an ad hominem attack that doesn’t address any of the points I made. I don’t give a fuck. You’re not engaging in reasonable and honest debate. You’re trying desperately to lessen the impact of the predictable outcome of your party’s efforts to fuck with the vote. Little old lady held up as heroic case example of the harmful and shameful impact of Republican governance? This calls for some top notch pettifoggery! ---
**Author:** ![RTFirefly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c77e96/32.png) [@RTFirefly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RTFirefly)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/76 "2013-02-15T18:29:26Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > Well, I said “to pick an absurd example,” simply to illustrate the vagueness of terms like “easy” and “convenient.” > > But here’s a more realistic one, since you apparently have problems with more inchoate analogy: how many voter machines should be assigned to a particular polling place? What factors should be considered in reaching that decision? > > I can go a long way in ensuring virtually no wait time, for example, if I decide to assign fifty machines to a polling place that historically has no more than 200 people per hour show up. > > But that’s a very expensive solution. Ten machines would seem to be acceptable, even though it might mean a short wait. Five machines might be enough, that 200 people per hour was linearly spread over the hour. But if 100 people show up inside ten minutes, there will be a wait, no matter what. > > How do we balance the cost of the voting machines against the need for ease and convenience? First thing is to make sure that the distribution of voting machines matches, as best as possible, the distribution of expected turnout based on recent elections of the same type. While I don’t have a cite handy, I think it’s been pretty well documented that in many states, there has been quite a mismatch in this regard, with cities getting the short end of the stick, and the resulting long lines. Second thing you do is, extend early voting, particularly on evenings and weekends near the election. This is your insurance policy if you goof up with the machines. The more early voting hours you have at times when people tend to be off work, the more people will get voting out of the way before Election Day, and the less it will matter if you get the distribution of machines wrong, because you’ll have gotten the crowds out of the way already. You know, this isn’t rocket surgery, as one Doper’s handle says. This is common fucking sense, and you’re going to great lengths to kick up dust. ---
**Author:** ![Rachellelogram](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rachellelogram/32/8689_2.png) [@Rachellelogram](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rachellelogram)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/77 "2013-02-15T18:30:03Z")
Yeesh. How about simple courtesy? Anyone who’s at least 100 years old should get to bypass the line, no matter how long it is. Really, I feel that anyone with an observable physical handicap (like being a hundred fucking years old) should get a “by” when it comes to standing in long lines. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/78 "2013-02-15T18:30:37Z")
> [@RTFirefly](#): > > And it’s been obvious for quite some time now which party deals in facts, and which deals in theories and ideology, and doesn’t want to be bothered with mundane things like facts. In [this thread](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=682285), **BrainGlutton** posted a screed accusing Sheriff Arpaio of hiring a known, convicted sex offender for the school protection “posse.” I refuted that claim, showing that the individual was a seven-year employee of the sheriff’s department, fired in 2009 shortly after being arrested for a sex offense. That was factual: the claim about Arpaio was wrong – in fact, another poster contacted the original story author and the story has since been corrected. **BrainGlutton** responded thusly: > [@](#): > > In all the Doper community, only Bricker and magellan01 are such flaming bigot assholes as to rush to the defense of Sheriff Arpaio. Now, this is one of many such examples where the facts seem to take a back seat to the general concept that if someone is bad – that is, an enemy of progressive thought – facts are pretty much unnecessary; any criticism is valid and and refutation of such criticism constitutes a defense. A very unwelcome defense, I might add. So tell me: what part of that example shows the liberal side interested in truth, and the conservative side dismissing mundane things like facts? From where I sit, the precise opposite is true. ---
**Author:** ![Euphonious\_Polemic](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/euphonious_polemic/32/3002_2.png) [@Euphonious\_Polemic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Euphonious_Polemic)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/79 "2013-02-15T18:31:57Z")
> [@Bricker](#): > > That sure seems to be an ad hominem attack that doesn’t address any of the points I made. It might help if you bat your eyelashes when you say that. Maybe a little pout too. ---
**Author:** ![Bricker](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/977dab/32.png) [@Bricker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bricker)\ **Post date:** [February 15, 2013, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/fox-102-year-old-woman-had-to-wait-in-line-3-hours-to-vote-whats-the-big-deal/650380/80 "2013-02-15T18:31:58Z")
> [@Rachellelogram](#): > > Yeesh. How about simple courtesy? Anyone who’s at least 100 years old should get to bypass the line, no matter how long it is. Really, I feel that anyone with an observable physical handicap (like being a hundred fucking years old) should get a “by” when it comes to standing in long lines. Absolutely. I can’t imagine not moving her to the front based on this. [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=3) [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=5)