I early voted last Wednesday because I had to go into “town” (Leesburg hardly counts as a town but that’s where the courthouse is). Ok, not had to but the local grocery store was running a sale on Bluebell ice cream and I needed to stock up. Hmmmm… ice cream… guess that does count as had too. 
Anywho, since I was there and the polling place was staying open until seven I swung by just to see if there was any kind of line. There wasn’t so I voted. In and out in about twenty minutes.
My polling place is the lobby of my apartment building. I left for work around 6:30, a half hour before the polls were to open, and the sofas were already full of wannabee voters (6-7 total) waiting for the election workers to finish setting up. More were coming up the walk.
I came home around 3:30, and there was no wait–the machines were being kept busy, but I’d no sooner signed in than a machine opened up. The Philadelphia ballot is pretty short this year (no judges, only a few state officials), so I wasn’t in long.
I can see the front entrance from my apartment windows, and right now (6:40 PM local time) there’s no line, but a pretty good flow of people in and out. (My district is mostly the inhabitants of the building, but we also host a second polling place for a neighboring district. They get put in the trash room. It’s cleaned out first!) A white-haired lady on a cane just left, guys in suits and ties are headed in, and a few minutes ago three people were filming with a video camera outside the front window, then taking pictures of themselves grinning with their arms around each other. I got the impression they wanted a souvenir of the occasion.
Most election years, dueling party signs are planted on opposite sides of the courtyard walk, the legally correct distance from the front entrance. This year, there is an Obama-Biden sign, and on the opposite side, there’s nothing.
Two comments:
#1: There’s no way that 96% of the population is even eligible to vote.
#2: Many people from other countries move to somewhere in the U.S. and assume their experience is representative. Every state, every county, every city, every ward is a different experience. My polling place had three wards and a “rural” section all in one building. Voting was smooth and fast. There were volunteers available to help, and there was enough room for lines to form inside so nobody would be in the rain. They were even doing flu shots in the building lobby.
That astounds me. Around here, no political signs are allowed near a polling place. The houses nearby had to take their signs and such down before the polls opened.
I had the same thing happen to me. I voted in the primaries, and even called City Hall a few weeks ago to make sure I’m registered. My live-in boyfriend was on the list inside, but I wasn’t. They were taking our names and letting us vote provisionally until they could confirm registration, but it was time-consuming, annoying and worrisome. I checked the list outside the building as I was leaving, and I was listed there.
I’m really glad we went early in the day; we got to the polling place around 7:20 and had a 40-minute wait to vote. Now it’s nearly 7 and I’m stuck at work. Argh!
Voter turnout numbers are always based, here in the US at least, on the total number of registered (and presumably eligible) voters - not simply the residents of the locale. I see no reason to believe that Australia, or other compulsory voting areas consider it any differently.
I got to my polling place at 6:25a, and there were already about 20 people in line. By the time it opened at 7, the line was over a block long.
The guy in front of me in line was pretty weird and kept yelling that the Republicans were cheating. He ranted about many things, including a supposed connection between the Republicans and “the mafia in Rome.”
Our ballots were Scantron-style that you filled out with a pen. My first attempt at feeding the Scantron into the scanner was rejected because a few of the bubbles had, like, slivers of white showing. (The machine was pretty neat in that it told you which ones weren’t totally filled in, like “Illegible Mark, Judge 10.”) As I was correcting my bubbles, the crazy guy from the line comes up and his is also rejected. He immediately cried out, “Oh, the machine is broken! The Republicans are cheating!!” The few of us standing nearby though that was pretty funny.
I was in and out in about 15 minutes. We didn’t have touch screen voting this time…I like touch screen. I had to fill in bubbles. I didn’t vote for or against any of the judges to stay in office…how the hell should I know?
I was afraid I’d get stuck at work till after 7:30 whern Ohio polls close, so I was one of the people standing in line at 6:25, for the 6:30 opening. There were about 50 people ahead of me.
I live in a small suburb, but we have one precinct with Columbus residents and one from my suburb both voting at our high school, so it’s a little bit busier than the other precincts nearby.
We had an ultra-organized experience. They opened promptly at 6:30, split us up into four lines. There were volunteers cruising the line making sure that everyone was in the right line. Someone wandered through with election day doughnuts. There was a volunteer from a Voters’ Rights group standing around observing and willing to help anyone who needed information. I wound up standing behind neighbors who live a few houses away from me, so we chatted while waiting in line. It took a little while to get each voting machine unlocked for the first voters, but it went pretty quickly.
We had a fairly long ballot, with lots of issues, but I was prepared, so I probably voted in less than a minute.
Left the precinct at 7:14, so it took just over 45 minutes.
GT
There is a rule about number of yards from the polling place (IIRC) - our polling place is a fire station - across the street from the fire station is a park that is a block square - on the other side of the park people were far enough away to be able to retain their lawn signs. And this was a BIG McCain Palin sign - easy to read from the distance.
But people were parking along the streets up about two blocks - so I saw lots of lawn signs on your way to polling - including a Nader sign!
I voted on Thursday. Depending on which Denver newscast you watch, somewhere between one-third and one-half of Colorado voted before Election Day. It took me just a few minutes because, on principle, I vote “no” on constitutional amendments. I believe the process for changing the state constitution should be much more involved and deliberatory than the current process, which seems to involve hiring a bunch of neo-con teen-agers to shove petitions in the faces of mall shoppers along I-25.
I voted at my precinct in Harlem. I don’t know what the polls were like at 6:00 am, because I went in mid-afternoon (around 2:00.) I waited for only a few minutes before I got to vote. Everything was calm and orderly, but you could tell that people were excited and a little nervous.
As you might guess, Harlem is strongly pro-Obama. Almost every other store displays shirts with Obama on them. I’ve seen plenty of posters, T-shirts, hats, and murals with Obama and Martin Luther King together. I didn’t see any of that at the polls, though.
The worst part was getting the kids up. They always go to sleep in the car when my hubby comes to pick me up from work. We got in at 6:45 and were out by 6:50.
The poll workers said they had the massive crush for about two hours this morning, but then it was steady the rest of the day. We have 1100 voters in our precinct: almost 900 had voted. That’s incredible.
Virginia.
This morning, my wife voted early, took her about an hour, big crowd. Everyone predicted things were just getting started. Poll staffers estimated an evening shift stand-in-line time of SIX HOURS.
When I went to vote on said evening shift, I didn’t have to wait for anyone at all, until the moment of actually stuffing the paper ballot into the ballot box (which hummed and looked suspiciously like a shredder!), at which point I had to wait a moment for the guy ahead of me to finish feeding in his ballot.
No wait at all. I feel kind of…cheated, actually.
Now I’m worried the rain suppressed turnout. I can’t imagine being deterred by rain, but who knows.
Edit: We made our marks in BLUE ink (pens supplied). To the LEFT of our candidate. Evil Liberal Media bias?
Sorry for all your troubles. In Oregon, all our elections are mail-in or drop-off ballots. We got our ballots in the mail two weeks ago. My wife and I sat down Sunday evening with a glass of wine and our voter’s pamphlet to double-check the text on the measures, and filled in those little ovals, Took about 15 minutes. Yesterday, I detoured two whole blocks on my commute and dropped them at the county courthouse, in a convenient secure curbside pickup.
We could have mailed them as early as two weeks ago and not even had to drop them off.
Since the state converted to the vote-by-mail system a few years ago, it has been remarkably efficient, easy and non-controversial. No expensive, untrustworthy voting machines, a paper ballot for double checking and a simpler life for county clerks.
Having covered elections for decades, it is much sweeter. I will call in to the AP and to our newspaper, which will be updating its website, and be home by 11:30 or so.
When we had vote-that-day-only, my vigil used to last until the wee hours, and still things could be in doubt.
This is definitely better.
Rained hard last night, but clear and bright this morning when the polls opened. 20-30 min wait, and in the booth it strikes me that I’m a little bit giddy. For years I’ve cast my ballot, with a deep sense of resignation, for the least worst choice. But this time I cast with enthusiasm, and the hope that I just might be helping to reclaim my country from a pack of theives.
May I just say early voting rules?
It was great. My neighborhood, Rogers Park, is a diverse little area–it was great to see so many different shades of American humanity, dressed in everything from basketball unis to suits and dresses to … well, I don’t know what the old guy was trying to pull off fashionwise but if it worked for him… there to vote for Barack Obama. 20 minutes and done.
A lot better than the cramped firehouse that the poor saps who voted today had to sardine their way into!
I understand how it works. But he said (and I quote), “resulting in turnouts of between 96 and 99 percent of the population.” Not “of registered voters.” Not “of eligible voters.” I was pointing out that he can’t say we’re only getting 42% of the population turning out in the U.S. and his former country got 96% to 99%.
I never made any such comparison.
It should have been clear to anyone with two functioning neurons that the 96-99% figure was based on eligible voters. I don’t know anyone who gives voter turnout percentages based on total population. I certainly don’t.
Also, i never gave a percentage for America. I just pointed out that, in pure raw numbers, there has never been a US election in which anywhere near 200 million people have voted. If you can find me something to contradict that claim, i’d be happy to see it.
In case you’re interested, even in the 2004 election, which had the highest turnout (in total numbers) in US history, the percentage of the Voting-Eligible Population who voted was still only 60.1%.
THAT is the number that i would compare with Australia’s 96+%.
I went about 1:30. They gave me a choice of paper ballot or touch screen and I used the touch screen. Voted for president, senator, representative, and state’s attorney. Also against the proposed constitutional convention (it’s only been forty years since the last one) and for a recall method for governor and such. Skipped the judges, as always. I don’t know anything about any of them, so I leave that to the people who do. I doubt I was there ten minutes all told, including getting my sticker. Oh, did I mention I was the only voter there?
I would have liked to go with my daughter, since it was her first time, but she wanted to do it by herself.
Otakuloki! I thought about you on the 4th. I went to the Hyatt to watch the results come in. Were you there? I was the big mama with the fuzzy fro!
My voting was fast and easy once I got my court order. At first they couldn’t find my name; but I went to the democratic offices and they got me a court order, pronto. My daughter loved being in the booth with me, and closing the curtain with the big metal arm, but I had to let her know that actually pulling the lever for Obama was my job, and by golly, she wasn’t going to snatch it from me!