A lot of talk just now seems to suggest that voting in the US elections is a serious effort and drain on time. This is given as a reason why people may be put off voting.
How long does it really take on average? And what is most of the time spent doing? Why does this take so long?
I ask because from my experience of UK elections voting has always been within ten minutes travel of home (usually even on foot) and hasn’t ever taken more than five minutes once arriving there.
It’s going vary widely. It took me about 40 minutes af waiting this morning, with essentially zero travel time (the poll location was VERY close to home).
A coworker did “early voting” on Sunday and waited close to six hours!
Today it took me about 50 minutes after I got to the polling location. That was from around 9:00AM to 10:00AM.
I didn’t think it was too bad at all.
E3
I just got back. I was gone for maybe 20-30 minutes, and most of that was spent finding a parking space and waiting in line for my ballot.
There are a couple of threads going at the moment in which people are discussing their voting experiences:
In GD: Poll watching: how long are the lines at your poll?
In IMHO: Kiss me, I voted
It takes some time in many cases for a variety of reasons:
In places where it is taking hours of waiting on line, it becomes a problem for folks who have not been granted time off from work to vote (not uncommon, I don’t think).
It took me about 20 minutes to vote this morning 5 minutes of waiting in line. In most states you have the option of voting by mail via an absentee ballot but you generally need to request one a few weeks in advance of the election.
It varies wildly depending on district and what time you show up. When I showed up at my tiny rural district at 11:30, there was no line and I got to go straight in with no waiting - it took me about ten minutes to prove my registration, get signed in and stamped, and fill out the paper ballot with a number 2 pencil. While I was filling out the ballot, the lunch rush hit, and people who came in shortly after me had to line up down the hall, so their voting experience took much longer than mine. People in large cities with high voter turnout probably experience even longer waits at times, and the actual physical time it takes to vote would also vary depending on how the vote is registered (my paper ballot vs. computer ballots vs. big mechanical voting machines with levers and toggles).
I had to wait on line for about half an hour, after that, it was a simple matter of checking off my name in the voter list and flipping a bunch of levers.
I arrived at the polling station at 06:10am. The line for my district was already long; and for some crazy reason they split the line alphabetically; yet there was only one book that logged everybody, rendering the alpha-split stupid and needless.
Total time in the polling station was about 20 minutes.
My wife went around 10:30 and it was empty.
My polling place opened at 7:00 am, I showed at 6:30. nce the doors opened I waited about 15 minutes for the 12 people in front of me to do their thing at 4 voting machines. I saw about an average of 4 minutes of action for an hour’s worth of wait–and I was early. Folks who showed up at 7:00 am had a line of about 50 people, so I’d guess their waits to be about 48 minutes. And it’s going to get worse as the day progresses and the procrastinators start showing up.
Luckily 1.5 - 2 million of us have nothing else to do today (like go to work).
I had to wait for about half an hour, but the actual voting took maybe two minutes. I was impressed; there was a line when I arrived and a shorter but still considerable line when I left. Turnout seemed really high.
Also, see this thread in the Pit: Polling place fuckup! I was turned away on my first attempt to vote
Aren’t you sorry you asked, Futile Gesture? 
I vote in a wee rural district. Actually, two different districts vote at the same polling location, on opposite sides of the room.
I arrived at 10 AM and was out the door by 10:10. I was the 217th person to vote in my district.
No lines at all. The major delay was the little old ladies who were working the polls. Sweet as pie, mind you, but also half-deaf and half-blind. “The last name is Fries. FRIES. WITH AN ‘F’. No, not Breeze, FRIES. F - R - I - E - S. Wait, wait, wait. . . flip back a page! There, that one. NO, not Frank, Fries, next line down!” And they had to find my name in two different lists; one I signed, and they copied my name from the other list onto a sheet of notebook paper. 
Then we helped them find my husband’s name, which is different.
I have no grounds to complain, however, as I did not volunteer. 
And they got the job done just fine.
Got to the polls about 7:05 am and there were already about fifty people in front of me. I waited about 45 minutes, voting itself took less than five. As I was arriving, I ran into a coworker who was just leaving. She got there a little before 7 and said there were only about a dozen people in line, but it got big real fast. And the line was just as long when I left as it was when I got there.
Checking in from a San Francisco neighborhood:
Left home at about 7:45 AM.
Not even a five minute walk from home to the polling place.
Arrived at the designated spot and was second in line.
Waited about five minutes to be checked in, receive a ballot and wait for a voting “desk” to become available.
Another 5-10 minutes to get through the Federal votes, school boards and about 25 state and local propositions.
30 seconds to feed my ballots into the counting machine.
Less than five minute walk to the bus stop, where I caught my usual bus and got to work at the usual time.
Woo, that was tough!
It took me about ten minutes, including waiting in line.
We use optically scanned paper ballots, and it’s pretty damned easy. Anyone who can’t figure out how to fill in the right number of little ovals (they’re not even that little) probably shouldn’t be voting anyhow.
No line here. I walked up, signed in (they didn’t check my ID but the woman to the right of me was checked). It took a couple minutes to fill out the ballot and I was in and out in 5 minutes.
My co-worker waited in line in a small Wisconsin town for 1 hour and 15 minutes. She voted straight line ticket so her time actually voting was minimal.
I got there at the crack of dawn and didn’t have to wait in line, but we’ve had New Yorkers and New Jerseyites straggling late all morning with 2-hour line stories.
Then again, maybe they just slept in and are lying . . .
My time actually doubled from the customary 5 minutes to 10 minutes! The extra 5 minutes was waiting to sign in the registry. There were 12 booths that were touchscreen machines, and there was no waiting to use them once I got the electronic voting card. What I had a problem with was that I never received a sample ballot from our county…apparently, some were lost or never delivered to us, so I had to borrow one from the local Republican HQ 200 feet or so across the street.
This morning I walked across the street to the polling place. Not much of a line, took about 5 minutes to sign my name on the voter registration sheet, get my ballot, and fill out the bubbles.