Polls open at 6am in NY. Me and my hubby where at our polling place (a playground! I had to e-mail the Board of Elections to make sure of this since we moved into our house July of last year) at 5:50. The line was already out to the riding turtle.
The line got honked by passing cars and people cheering. One guy stuck his head out of his window and yelled “HISTORY!!!”
The wait was only a half an hour. I don’t even want to think about what it will be like after 5pm.
I got to my polling place (small church basement) at 5:55, nice line of 25 voters or so waiting to get in. Line was at about twice as long when the polls opened at 6, and longer still when I got finished at 6:15.
Funnily enough, I was in line behind a woman who worked in the same office building as me 5+ years ago. Small world.
Cold and rainy here in Richmond, VA. Hopefully that will not hurt turnout. I plan to vote about 2pm. I will check back. Thanks for starting this thread. Great idea.
We got there at about 5:45, and there was already a line going halfway down the block, which was longer by the time we left. Everyone cheered when the polls opened at 6. The signage in the building was awful; we were in line for a good 15 minutes before someone came and told us that our precinct was voting in the auditorium, and led us through the maze to get there. If we’d known that, we would have been done by 6:10; as it was, we were done by about 6:30. They were also short on election judges. It’s going to be bonkers later in the day.
I live in a little township in west central Indiana. My husband went shortly after six this morning and said he had to wait about 10 minutes. I went right at 7 and only had to wait a few minutes. Everyone was in a good mood. I feel great!
Weather here is very pleasant - I’m curious as to what the voter turn out numbers will be.
Voted early. Took an hour! It’s the longest I’ve ever waited to cast my vote, and I’m wondering if that bodes well or ill.
I got to my polling place at 6:50, polls open at 7. I was number 121 in line. In the next 10 minutes, about another 50 people showed up. Took about an hour to get through it, but it was worth it! So exciting!
I felt bad for some people though, because they posted a list of registered voters outside the polling place about a month ago, so you could check if you were registered. Somehow, people who were on that list weren’t on the list inside, so they were forced to vote provisionally. I thought that was bullshit, and was glad it wasn’t me.
Not voting.
Don’t care.
You asked.
I posted this in another thread, but here goes:
I showed up at my polling place at 5:40 AM; polls opened at 6:00.
A poll worker was counting people in line and a guy right behind me was #100. This was at 5:55. I’ve been voting in this precinct for 10 years now, and I’ve never seen it like this. Usually, the line is about 50 people at 6AM; today, it was around 300. The turnout in my precinct in 2004 was about 1400 people. I wonder what it will be this time!
People seemed very calm and determined, but happy. I normally hate long lines with a purple passion, but I gladly and patiently waited my turn. I didn’t know I had it in me!
Inside, we had a choice of electronic or paper ballots; a lot of people chose paper, but I voted electronically at 6:25 AM.
Good luck out there and go vote, whomever you’re for.
Polls open at 7 am here in RI. I was the 92nd person to vote. There wasn’t a line, but each of the 6 polling stations were occupied when I got in. I was a little disappointed that there weren’t any people outside with signs, but really, RI is so blue that it’d be a waste of effort. I was in and out in about 10 minutes.
Yay!
Our polls opened at 6. I was there at 8:10. There was no line to speak of. Everybody was cheerful.
AND–they had a big bowl of Reese’s peanut butter cups and Butterfingers out!
Our polls (small town east-central PA) opened at 7 AM; we walked down at 7:15 or so, and the booths were all in use with 3 people in line ahead of us. Took about 10 minutes total. They didn’t even blink at probably the only two ‘green party’ registration cards in the county (no, we did not vote the Green ticket)
NY polls supposedly open at 6. The one in our neighborhood let us cool our heels in a long line until 6:30. The venue is an Episcopal church, in the door, down one narrow hall, 90° turn, down another narrow hall, then down into a room already overstuffed with 8 or 9 old-fashioned no-electricity fully mechanical lever-operated steel blue voting machines plus 3 tables at which you give your name, they find it in the book, get you to sign, then fill out a card to keep track of who did indeed vote.
Each table is for one of 4 election districts. Approximately 65% of the people have some notion what their district is, the rest have no idea and therefore no idea which table to go to. The long snaky line down the narrow halls suddenly tries to fan out into four lines headed for the four tables, but what with people coming back the other way after they voted, people coming back from tables and headed for the voting machines getting in the way of those trying to get to the tables, and the volunteer folks squeezed in operating external levers on the voting machines and handing those cards back and forth, and the handful of lost souls oozing around trying to find the right election district table & machine, plus some volunteer impartial observers, it’s absolute unmitigated chaos. 45 minutes from end of line to voting booth, and that was at crack of dawn. I doubt it will get better as the day rolls on.
It’s like what you’d expect if some country that had never had voting but had read about it in books, and was doing it for the first time.
It’s embarrassing, frankly.
Easy peasy. I sent off for my absentee ballot a brazillion years ago, but Massachusetts couldn’t find it in their hearts to actually send it to me. Fortunately, the US Embassy here had a special voting day Oct. 14th where you could go fill out a ballot, and they would send it back to the US via diplomatic pouch or something. No lines, no muss, no fuss. And the embassy is only about a mile from where I work.
It took me about 15 minutes to get in and out. I’ve never voted at a polling place before so I didn’t know what to expect. (Last election back in FL, I voted early and waited 3 hours.) There were about 75 people there and things were a little confusing with different lines sort of merging into each other. I was also surprised to see that the markers provided to fill out the ballot weren’t chained down. I hope they have a large supply of those. I am disappointed that they didn’t give me a sticker.
I went yesterday with a friend between classes. Rather than go today (as I was planning to do), we figured it would be much easier to do it a day early. There were maybe 9 or 10 people milling around the front office, with one clipboarded lady making sure everyone was doing what they needed to be doing. I went into the actual polling place, got my ballot, and voted! Whole thing took less than 10 minutes. I am so glad I’m not going there today.
NJ. I’m not sure what time the polls opened, but I put it off until after I’d gotten my kids to their school (open).
Voting was at another school (closed) and the first thing I noticed were lines and lines of cars waiting for parking spots behind the school. I parked around the corner and walked a block to get there.
I have never been at that polling place when more than 10 people were there voting. There were 50 inside & already in lines as I walked in. A teacher from that school had organized a bake sale and was selling bagels & pastries for donations at a table in the corner. As she had ‘very little change available’ and as most people hadwith them with ATM machine tens or twenties, she was rakin’ in the dough. (“Kids, this year our class trip will be to Maui…”).
Signing the book was easy…no line. But it was 20+ deep in front of each touch screen voting machine at 8:15AM. There were occasional really long pauses while people were in the booths voting; one person literally took 20 minutes to push 7 buttons. (If intentionally wasting time in the booth is a strategy to nullify voter turn out, its pretty pathetic)
One person had trouble signing the book as they couldn’t find his address. I didn’t stay long enough to hear the result. A police car was roling into the parking lot as I was walking back towards my car & the twenty something cop behind the wheel gave me a jaw-clenched ‘I’m watching you’ stare down. I just smiled a big grin and kept on walking.
Total time out of my day: 45 minutes.
Bagel ‘for a good cause’: $10
Being able to have a say in the future of America: Priceless
Our polling place (right across the street from where I work, which is great) opened at 7 a.m. I arrived at about 7:25 and was done by about 7:35. There were no lines, but it seemed that there was a pretty steady stream of people coming in. When I put my ballot in the machine I looked and it said I was voter number 57. Not bad for our small town of 2,300 people.
Voted in Calumet Township, just outside Gary, Indiana which is near Chicago, Illinois for those of you unfamiliar with the area.
In 10+ years the longest wait I’ve had at the polls was 10 minutes. Until today. Today was 45 minutes. I showed up at 7 am, an hour after the polls opened. By the time I left, the line was out the door. No problems, just LOTS of people. Never seen such a turn out before.
Got to mine at around 6:45am, waited until 7:30 and the line had barely even moved and I had to leave to go to work. I’ll go back again tonight after work when I can wait even longer. There were easily 70 people ahead of me in line, but something was causing it to take around 5 minutes for each person to make it in the door from the front of the line. I’m slightly annoyed, but I think it’s a good thing so many people showed up.
