Note to self: when telling stories meant to illustrate how I’m a badass conservative who made a monkey out of a liberal group, I should do a little research instead of randomly selecting a group whose name just sounds like it might endorse left-leaning causes and candidates.
I see those long lines after poll closings and wonder if half the voters say. “Holy crap. I should go vote.” at 6:50pm
That’s my take on it; I live a half-kilometer/400 yards from my local polling place(the local elementary school), and the polls open at 7 am on election day, so it’s much simpler for me to just go on the way to work than to drive miles out of my way and wait in line.
On Tuesday I waited in line for maybe 5 minutes at most, voted in about the same amount of time, and left.
The other thing is that despite most states having laws requiring employers to give time off to vote, most people do it after work on election day, so you get a massive rush at relatively small places at the very end of the process.
I’d wager that the election day in most precincts goes like this:
7:00-8:30: Moderate activity from people on their way to work.
8:30-11:30: Dull- nobody but the aged, unemployed or stay-at-home moms comes to vote.
11:30-1:30: Moderate activity from people on their lunch break.
1:30-4:30: Dull- nobody but the aged, unemployed or stay-at-home moms comes to vote.
4:30-close: Frantic, busy activity when everyone shows up after work to vote.
As a poll worker for this election we JUST had…(worked 13 days early voting and election day)
Reasons for lines:
Polling places vary as to location for the precincts. Different states have different rules about it. Many are set up in schools which means setting up in advance is not an option as the only day we have access IS the day of the election. Others use community centers. Regardless of where they are, most supplies have to be under lock and key or in the physical possession of the polling place official until the day of election.
While our state (TN) pays election officials (all those are called “election officials” that who work at any position during voting) but it is not much compared to the number of hours involved. Most of us who work are either retired or unemployed.
We have early voting here. We had about 10 locations around the county. Many counties in TN do not have the population to support more than one or two locations which is usually set up in the largest town in the county. And you have to vote in your county during early voting.
During early voting, our location had 31502 voters come thru, total for our county was 109,614 early voters. About a third of those had to change something while in there, mostly address. The advantage of early voting is that regardless of which precinct in the county you live in, you can still vote at one of the centers…even across on the other side of the county.
That is not true of election day…a voter MUST vote in the precinct where they physically live. Depending on county size is how many precincts are located in the county. Our county which is one of the largest in TN but not THE largest has 85 precincts. That means 85 sets of booths, other equipment, staff for each location with a mix of Republicans and Democrats at each one. Those of us who are Independent have to declare as either a R or D for election work.
On election day our location only had about 400 voters come in but of those, only 335 could actually vote IN that precinct. The rest were in the wrong place based on their address and had to be “forwarded” with paperwork to the correct location. Handling that paperwork takes up time and resources AS well.
And the number of booths sent out is based on previous elections (major ones). Since our precinct had such a low turnout in 2008, we had a minimal number of booths set to us to vote. So yes, we had a line but it never exceeded 15-20 mins. And OUR ballot was fairly simple. We only had 5 pages for the county and 6 for the city.
During early voting, we did have lines just before we opened each morning and on the final day of early voting, we had a line wrapped around the building and up the hill…most were INSIDE to vote in less than 15 mins…we were complimented on how quickly and smoothly everything was running.
Most people who stand in line on voting day in places that do early voting either didn’t bother to find out about early voting or wanted to stand in line to chat with their neighbors.
Liz
Self-styled badass conservatives have an egregious history of misogyny, so I saw really nothing implausible about an attack on the LWV.
I don’t quite get what you’re saying, Johanna. It’s certainly plausible for Mr. Upchurch to take a swipe at the League of Women Voters. It’s just that he tipped his hand that the story might just be fabricated by slipping up on this little data point.
I used the league of women voters for the 12 constitutional amendments on the ballot. If you think the League of Women Voters doesn’t have a point of view then you are very gullible.
There was no selection involved. I just googled the Florida constitutional amendments and te LWV was one of the first hits I got.
When I worked worked through the 12 amendments, I disagreed with them 11 out of twelve times.
One clarification: You can’t vote “straight party” in this sense in all states. California, for example, does not have a simple single check box to choose all candiates of one party. If you want to vote a straight ticket, you have to select each individual race.
That’s how it’s always been done wherever I’ve lived. It was a surprise to me to learn that some ballots allowed a single checkoff for a straight party ticket. Although I always do vote a straight Democratic ticket, it only makes sense to me to select each individual one at a time. There’s no guarantee the Democrats might not nominate a stinkeroo. Sometimes they do, and my vote would consciously screen out such a one.
Does the LWV have a bias? Yes. Yes, they do. Their bias is in favor of good government—which I hope and expect is not a partisan or ideological issue.
In my particular state, city and school district elections tend to be held separately from general elections. General elections for federal, state and county offices are held every 2 years, but if you factor in all of the city and school district elections, as well as primary elections (where party nominees are selected) and runnoff elections (which, in my state, are held of no candidate gets a majority vote in the primary election) there may be several elections held in a single year. However, the voter turnout in most of these elections is very small. This year I waited in line 10 or 15 minutes to vote in the general election. The last time I voted before was in a primary runnoff for county court clerk where I basically I was able to just walk in, sign in, and pick up my ballot.
In my county in Washington, we’re 100% vote-by-mail. (Like Oregon is.) Solves all election-related problems.
Even in the years before we went vote-by-mail, the majority of voters were using so-called “absentee” ballots. (Which of course don’t have any requirement that you actually be outside the State to use.)
You people on the East Coast should start following our lead.
/ obligatory smug Pacific Northwest post
And (partly) because ballots only need to be postmarked — not delivered — by the time the polls close, we’re still several days away from a final tally. So perhaps the smugness is a tad unwarranted.
(Of course, the knuckledraggers insist it’s because King County Elections need to figure out how many Inslee ballots they need to fabricate in order to compensate for the fact that McKenna actually won.)
So? I don’t see any particular requirement for a fast 100% tally, and the mail-in system lets us pre-count a large proportion of the ballots so our initial estimates are a lot more accurate.