Over an hour, Washington, DC.
Less that 5 min - central Indiana.
Our county had voting centers set up around the county and (with ID) you could vote at any one of them. The closest one was about a mile and 1/2 away - a volunteer fire dept. It was well-staffed with about a dozen voting machines. The voting center on campus was apparently MUCH busier, according to my husband.
Took longer to walk from the car to the polling place, which was in the back end of the building than it did to get checked in and to vote.
They were geared up for mobs - they had 15 or so voting machines, and there were far more staff than voters at 1:30 PM. I’m sure they had their mobs at 5:00 PM.
Bout 5 minutes - rural Maine. Longest part was the poll worker finding my name in the registry. Every time, man. It’s really not that hard.
When I voted in Quebec in Sept, it took five minutes. For yesterday’s election, I mailed in my ballot in late September. My daughter complained that when she went to vote yesterday (in Brooklyn) she got there at 6:30, a half hour after the polls opened and still had to wait an hour and a half. She timed it and it was taking four minutes for each voter to be processed. As most of you know, in parts of VA, they had to extend the voting by up to four hours to accommodate all the people waiting when the polls were supposed to close at 7PM.
Dutchess County NY. In and out in approx 2 minutes, no wait at all. Checked in, signed my name, filled in the circles for the few races and 2 propositions on the ballot, fed it into the machine. Quick and easy, then off to Pennsylvania to campaign for the rest of the day.
Took about 2.5 hours to get through. And the lines only got longer. We were still bringing in poll data at 3am last night (well, this morning I guess) and I didn’t get home until around 4. Slept most of the day.
The ironic thing is I helped set up and support multiple early voting sites throughout the state, and idiot that I am I didn’t go to any of them. :smack:
(In my defense this was the first time my youngest son could vote in a Presidential election and he wanted to go together to vote for Obama)
My California absentee ballot was dropped off in a minute. A great way to go!
Over 2.5 hours on the Upper East Side of Manhattan (ten minutes to get in the building; ten minutes to find/make my way to the line for my election district; 1.5 hours waiting for the ballot; two minutes to fill out the ballot; about 40 minutes on line for the scanners).
Less than 5 mins to walk in and vote…spent more time talking with friends than waiting.
Early voted, first day…metro Knoxville, TN.
Less than five minutes in Euclid, OH (an inner-ring suburb of Cleveland).
Springfield, Illinois. Voted at a bowling alley where a bunch of junior high kids were there bowling on a field trip. About three people in front of me, one of whom was deaf and wasn’t getting what the election official was telling him.
I was in an out in less than 10 minutes, but more than 5.
Less than 30 minutes on the west side of Houston, TX.
Fort Myers, FL. 1.5 hours.
The wait times here in New Mexico, especially in a few counties are becoming a real political hot potato, with a lot of finger pointing staring to go on behind the scenes (or even in front of them). The press had a field day casting blame as well.
In most cases, as far as I can tell, it came down to requests for more machines (I talked to one of the BOE chiefs for one of the counties, and he said he requested 5 machines per voting site…and received 2) before the election and those additional machines being denied due to budget constraints. The thinking seemed to be that the election would be more like what happened in 2008 than, say, what happened (here) in 2000…but the reality was that even with the large early voting a large number of people came out to vote on election day as well.
Under 5 minutes. Southern California. 2 people ahead of me in line at the check in table. No wait for a voting booth. Biggest hold up was spelling my last name so the geriatric poll worker could hear it correctly. “C” “B?” “No, C” “B?” “No, C” “B?” “Here’s my sample ballot. See? C…” “Oh, C…”
I chose 30-60 minutes.
I left home around 6:15 am and walked to my polling place, because the parking there is limited. Got there around 6:35, and I was the 46th person in line. The poll opened at 7. I was out of there by 7:30. I probably would have had less of a wait later in the day, but I had heard about people waiting in early voting lines for several hours, and I had other stuff to do, so I got it over with first thing.
South Florida
Less than 5 minutes here in San Francisco at around 4:20pm. I live in a quiet neighborhood though, I’m sure other areas had longer waits.
this was at about 7 p.m. after work
Sacramento, California, <5 minutes, 8:30 AM.