I don’t know why, but for some reason I enjoy reading about them.
Mine was about as dull as you can get, here in the battleground state of Ohio. I voted last Tuesday. Went to the Board of Elections, filled out my paperwork, was given my voter access card by a very cheerful and pleasant employee, voted, and left. There was a steady stream of people, but no waiting.
My husband is a poll worker today. He may have some interesting tales to tell this evening.
Got my absentee ballot in the mail three weeks ago. Mailed it back a week ago.
I went the first day of early voting, paused for 15 seconds behind one person then presented my identification. I went ahead and voted for each office separately as sometimes I’ll switch parties based on a person’s position, character or qualifications, but in the end it came out as a straight ticket.
I couldn’t have been out of my car for more than 10 minutes total.
My polling place is horrible for parking – long, one-lane driveway to a parking lot with not quite a couple dozen spaces. So I went really, really early and stood in the chill for 30 minutes, then 20 minutes in line inside. But the volunteers were very efficient and sweet. Literally: someone brought about a gross of donuts to hand out to voters.
Long line when the polls opened, but by the time I’d voted it was able to fit inside the building (unlike 2008).
Pennsylvania, out in the sticks. Voted at the sportsman’s club. It took under a minute.
The poll worker knows me. I told her my name and she called my name out to the person with the book. She looked me up and I signed. She then very embarrassingly asked if I cared to show photo ID. I flashed my DL, she pointedly did not look at it, and I moved along.
Waited in line maybe 15 min total. My polling place didn’t have a sign alerting you that you had to walk past the line (which was people who’d already checked in and were waiting to get their ballots) to check in and sign your voter slip. So after alerting the poll workers (who kind of shrugged - perhaps they aren’t allowed to make their own signs or something), people in line just kept alerting newcomers.
We had about a dozen little booths for writing on paper (optically scanned) ballots, the scanner, and one electronic voting machine. Two poll workers were on the phone with tech support regarding the electronic voting machine; from what I could tell, it had failed during startup testing (not real voting) and was not saving results.
I live in a pretty Republican leaning district. I was going to vote early but the lines at the library have been utterly ridiculous all week. When I got to my polling place this morning at 7:45 there was already a decent crowd. Took about an hour to vote. When I finally got out the line was really starting to pick up. At least where I live, the mood is completely different to 2008.
Posted this in the election day thread:
Had to show my photo ID while casting my ballot in a church.
Made me so proud to be an American!
Quite an impressive display of incompetence by the workers - I don’t think fraud was needed to question the reliability of the process! I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they will get better at it as the day goes on.
Also pretty dull for me in NC, where I voted early. The one possibly interesting bit involved — well, I don’t know quite what happened, but this lady became very angry and insisted that the workers were requesting ID before she could vote. I think perhaps she hadn’t registered, or they couldn’t find her in the system, or something. But she was pretty obviously annoyed about it.
Voted by mail a couple weeks ago. Avoided long lines and stayed in the air conditioning the entire time. Win!
I voted early in Harford County, one of the few Republican enclaves in Maryland. I was in and out in about a half hour. Minorities had clearly gotten the message about voting early. They were out in full force, which was great to see considering that ten years ago there weren’t many minorities in the entire county. Also, whereas this area is generally saturated with signs for whatever Republican is running for any office, there are very few signs posted anywhere. Hooray for progress!
I waited in line while early voting on Friday. Not too exciting, but I was surprised to see as many people as I did at the early voting site.
A decent line at 7 AM, took about an hour. This is the first year where polling places aren’t set up in each district/neighborhood (where the wait used to be <5 minutes), but in 15 places around the county. The closest polling place to my district was five miles away, rather than the block away that it used to be, and my district has a lot of people without cars… wondering how that’s going to affect turnout.
I did get to flirt with a cute poll watcher while waiting, though, and got a number. 
In southwest Chicago suburbia, it was busy but quick. I voted a half hour after polls opened and was #53 according to the ballot machine. Some woman in front of me wasn’t showing up as registered in the precinct and was trying to browbeat the election judge. Having served judge duty before, I assume they eventually gave her a provisional ballot.
Easy and quick. I’m in NJ and the school I’d normally vote in was damaged by the storm. Our district was combined with another at a different school, and though there was a steady flow of voters coming and going, I was in and out in 5 minutes.
I was in line at 6:45, polls opened at 7:00, I was out by 7:15. They don’t make you wait for a privacy booth. You can sit at one of several tables and fill out the ballot if you like. Speeds things up considerably.
Regards,
Shodan
Busier than I expected. I arrived at my polling location to find that they had two lines, for last names starting with A-K and L-Z. Those in the A-K line had about a 20 minute wait to vote. Those in the L-Z line had about a 45 minute wait. Thank goodness I have a last name that fell into the A-K camp. It’ll be interesting to hear what has happened all day when I wake up for work tonight.
On a scale of one to ten, one being a Shanghai bus station at Chinese New Years, and ten being complete metaphysical order, I’d say it was a 3.65. I was there at 7 when the polls opened and there were probably 150 people in line. I checked in and was told to sit in a waiting area until a poll worker directed me to an electronic machine (as opposed to waiting in another long line for a paper ballot). But the poll workers who were running the electronic machines were expecting people to join a different line, and were not directing people in the seats to line up.
After several minutes of sitting, I just joined the line, which was hardly moving. So I left and joined the paper ballot line, and 20 minutes later I was done. The whole thing took a little over an hour. As I left I saw that people were still being directed to the seats that nobody was monitoring.
At 7:40am I was #36 and the only one there (a guy walked out as I walked in). Showed ID, woman started to look me up in the book to sign and spilled her coffee on the book. “That’s not my page is it?” I asked. It wasn’t, the coffee wiped easily. Pennsylvania’s ballot was short, on one side of a page. Easy. Was still 10 minutes early for work at 8am.