My poor phrasing. I should have said “voting stations.” Sorry.
Only once did I use an actual machine in LA County, a few years ago, when they had electronic touch screen early voting. I think it was just an experiment for that year.
ETA: Found a reference to it. From 2006, apparently. Haven’t heard of it here since.
Suburban Chicago. Had to wait behind one person (for maybe 2 minutes) to check in with the election judge, then proceeded directly to an electronic voting machine (no wait at that point).
I waited about 15 minutes, starting at 7:30 this morning. I should have walked right in, but they had neglected to deliver the ballots to my scheduled polling place by opening time today (details!).
We were directed to another polling place about a mile away in someone’s garage and given provisional ballots.
A little over five minutes. I’m in New Jersey, but Northeast, where there was much less damage from Sandy - though the school being used for my polling place did just get power back last night. The lines were spit by district, so they varied; just two people ahead of me in my line but at least ten people were on line for one of the others.
Chelan County, WA. Zero waiting — filled out my “mail-in” ballot at home, sealed it in the envelope, then drove the few blocks to the courthouse and dropped it in the ballot dropbox.
About ten minutes waiting in line. Ann Arbor, Michigan, and got there just after 5:00. I thought our polls didn’t open until 8:00 am, or I could probably have had no waiting before work.*
There are two precincts in that location, and the other had no waiting (they’re always lighter than my precinct).
ETA: *or maybe not. Just spoke with my wife, and she had about a half-hour wait at about 2:00 pm, and was told that she was there at a good time, as it had been busier earlier.
Whole process took about an hour and a half. Suburban STL. My polling place is always really busy. Wish they would beef it up a bit (more workers, more stations). But it’s in a giant church so we get to wait inside. And this year they had free coffee/donuts which was nice but I did not partake. I woke up at 430am to vote and make it to work on time.
From when I left my car to when I got back in my car: 12 min, 47 seconds. (That includes voting for 3 soil and water conservation district supervisors) About 5 minutes to get my ballot (3 people ahead of me)
Southeast Minnesota “I can see Wisconsin (and almost Iowa) from my house”
Astoria, NY
( Astoria is in Queens,NY-- right across the East River from the Upper East Side)
It took me between 5 and 10 minutes, there were 3 people in front of me signing in and the process seemed to go slowly.This sometimes happens when both the voter and poll worker speak different flavors of heavily accented English.
Marking the ballot and scanning it went fairly quickly, all in all it was painless. I wasn’t sure what to expect. I’m in a new election district due to some local redistricting and the waits for different districts can be very different on average. There are several different election districts that share my polling place – some of them had lines that were as long as 30-35 people. I think those are the larger election districts, I’m lucky to live in a small one.