I is for Inquisitive

[the_siobhan]

I keep seeing posts about line-ups at polling stations. And this is for early voting.

Is that normal? How many polling stations do you normally have in an urban area?

I voted a couple of weeks ago in our federal election. I did it on my way to work and it took me all of five minutes.

[EDIT] inulro pointed this out, and I think it's just made out of awesome.

http://rednecks4obama.com/

Comments

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

No, it's not particularly normal. Last election, when Wisconsin was one of the "battleground" states, we were through in about 30 minutes at what would probably have been peak "after work" voting time. I can't help but wonder if this is at least partly due to people doing early voting particularly heavily, fearing long lines on Tuesday, and we'll find that on Tuesday, when things are ten times the number of voting stations set up for capacity crowds, that there's even less of a wait than normal.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

At my precinct, in the primary, there were about ten polling stations; the issue might be that there are multiple districts represented. I don't know how large a district is, but there are like 8 districts that poll at my polling place.

When I voted...in the midterms, I think (2006) though it might have been last year - there was an e-voting machine that NO ONE was touching with a big stick, though it was offered to everyone, and people were being told that if they didn't care about actually being in a polling booth, they could sit at the ends of the tables that the registrars were at (not the correct term, but I can't think of it - they verify your voting status). A lot of people, myself included, did that. It wasn't like someone was hovering over me watching me vote, and even if they were, so what?

Part of the issue with the early voting is that there is ONE voting station for all of King County that's open early, and we are by far not the largest population county in the country - that's talking maybe a million, maybe a million five, people. One station. God knows how many booths. I can believe there are lines. Also, I don't know how they work the ballots there, but they would have to match you up to your proper ballot really fast.

[marchenland.livejournal.com]

Interesting. We were the first people in our precinct to vote on a paper ballot. They had to figure out how to print them up. (To be fair, with early voting, anyone can vote at any precinct station, so they can't have every single ballot on hand, and it was slow mostly because the printer itself was a bit slow.)

But they would NOT let me go vote at a table while my BF was using the single paper-ballot booth.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

I actually have not early-voted partly because I don't care to drive fifteen miles for something that's going to be available less than a mile away next Tuesday (also, I'm a victim of the economy, so I don't have to go to work) but I was wondering how they handled the ballot issue. I would assume printing them out would be the reasonable way to go; as far as I know, we don't have any kind of electronic voting in WA yet, or at least not in King County (oddly, pretty much all the other counties are different from us; we're one of only two or three that still have in-person voting.)

[the-siobhan.livejournal.com]

Do they have to give you time off work to vote?

We have a federal law that employers have to provide three consecutive hours of off-time during polling hours.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

AHAHAHAHAHAHA no.

I'm sorry, you must have mistaken the US for a country like India. Or, indeed, for any marginally-civilised country in the world.

No one is legally obligated to give time off for work as far as I am aware. I am pretty sure that if you can't fit your polling place's hours into your schedule (they're, in my experience, open from 6 am to 8 pm) you're just fucked. I wouldn't have gotten any shit about being late because of voting where I worked, but that's not the same situation that most people are in. A lot of shiftworkers wouldn't be able to, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear that there are people being kept from polls by not getting time off.

[erik]

Some states require employers to give a small amount of time off (like, 2 hours) if the employee is scheduled a non-standard shift. Basically it amounts to enforced forgiveness for being late if you were voting.

[spacekadt.livejournal.com]

We do in California. I'm not sure of the details because we're a standard shift company and it doesn't really apply, but I think it's along the lines that you have to have two hours to vote. If you work a shift that doesn't allow you to do that outside of working hours, we have to allow it during working hours.

[hellsop.livejournal.com]

http://www.lwvwi.org/cms/content/view/19/78/

WI requires up to three hours to be made available to people to vote, with no penalty other than pay lost for time not worked, but workers must request it prior to day of. However, with the polls open 13 hours on Tuesday, it's not generally TOO difficult for people to work around that loss of work time.

[mathochist.livejournal.com]

But in WA, anyone can sign up as a permanent absentee voter. I got my ballot in the mail and returned it weeks ago.

I hear that by the next election, we'll be switched over to ALL mail-in voting, like OR. No lines for anyone.

[channonyarrow.livejournal.com]

Yep, I just like going in to vote. I know I'm crazy. *g*

[cantkeepsilent.livejournal.com]

It varies from state to state, but the general theme is that employers must accommodate their employee's voting needs unless the employee has three consecutive off-work hours while the polls are open. Of course, you might be SOL if you work two jobs that combine to fill the entire day.

http://www.nfib.com/object/IO_38994.html has got the whole table.

[redbird]

It depends on the state. (Like a wide variety of other things.)

In New York, there must be four consecutive hours before or after work in which you can vote and then travel to work, or your employer has to give you that much time if notified in advance. The polls here are open 0600 to 2100, so most office and many retail workers aren't affected by this, office workers because many get out at 5, retail because they often are expected to arrive at or after 10, or work early shifts and are done early-ish. (I'm on a nominal 9-5, though they're mellow about me doing 9:20-5:20 or thereabouts most days; if I leave at 5, that gives me 4 hours.) What I plan to do is go vote in the morning, as I always do, and not fret if I arrive a bit late. (And that's an aspect of who I work for, and to some extent of middle-class privilege; I'm not in a job where things will be messed up if there's nobody at my desk in a specific ten-minute period. This law is not widely publicized, and I think this is the first year I've heard it discussed. (I knew about it because it's part of the collection of things the state Department of Labor requires to be posted in workplaces, and my workplace has it posted over the copier. Photocopying is boring, so I read the posters.)

[melete.livejournal.com]

Do they have to give you time off work to vote?

Yes. They should. I don't know if the rules are federal or state, but work was very clear that if we needed time off on Tuesday that it would be accommodated. I know they aren't saying because they are being generous. However, if you are paid hourly, I don't imagine you get paid for the hours missed.

[rufus.livejournal.com]

polling is done by geographic density (i think?) so it depends on where you are, how many stations you get. Manhattan is full of them. When I lived in suburban NJ there were a lot, as well.

probably at issue the number of people *actually voting*, and when they are voting -- at peak times, etc. There's also the fact that a volunteer has to find your name, you have to sign in, etc. Also, voting technology varies -- pull-levers vs, electronic, etc, and some of the delay may be in volunteers having to sort people out.

In previous elections I've bounced through in five minutes, going after work, but I expect it won't be so speedy this year.

[cantkeepsilent.livejournal.com]

In New York, it works out to one election day polling station for every 500-700 eligible voters. We use the lever machines that I think you're used to, and those aren't even designed to accept over a thousand votes.

It is worth noting that early voting is much more complex than the normal routine. On election day, every precinct has a book of the registered voters; by contrast, going down to the county seat means that you have to be checked against the entire database to find out if you are registered. And, just as important, where you are registered, since there are literally dozens of different ballots throughout the county. There are four different Congressional districts, whose boundaries are probably not the same as the god-knows-how-many state legislature seats, and every town might have their own races as well. On Tuesday, with the individual localized ballot and the precinct book of registered voters, the only bottleneck is how long it takes each voter to flip the levers in the machine, and I suspect (hope) that it'll be five minutes for the folks who don't wait until after dinner.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

A Canadian data point: I was a scrutineer for the federal election again. Our polls were each lists/estimated counts of about 600 people, so you'd expect about 300 to show up over the 12 hours. The polling place where I was volunteering had five polls in the room. It was on campus, and some of the polls were for students living on campus, meaning that many of them were not on the lists yet and had to be added, which was an inefficient process. The poll I counted was the one for people who were actually living in that building, and we had 550 ballots to count. Around dining-hall dinnertime, there were typically about 50 people in line. The law is that if you're in line before the polls close, they stay open for you - and the last people finished voting about 30 minutes after the poll closed.

[greylock.livejournal.com]

I voted a couple of weeks ago in our federal election. I did it on my way to work and it took me all of five minutes.

Depending on the time of day, in Australia I find I need to leave up to 20 minutes for the actual voting, but I like to vote early and get on with my day. If I leave it until one of the peak times it can be longer, but it's not overly taxing.

Actually getting in and getting your name crossed off takes the time. And then trying to figure out of voting the CEC or the Christian Democrats higher on the ticket is a good thing or not.

[lil-m-moses.livejournal.com]

This election is drawing people out of the woodwork. Most of the country is really unhappy with the current President, and there are a lot of strong opinions about the two big candidates, especially with a black man as Presidential candidate vs. a (white) woman as VP candidate. Typical election participation is roughly 30-50% of registered voters (or maybe eligible voters...not sure). This year they're expecting more like 50-70%, which on the whole translates into millions more people than in the last 2 or 3 decades. Normally, yeah, I wouldn't expect a wait of more than 20 minutes, but this year is looking to be longer. After looking at the numbers (see my post earlier today), I don't think I would have ended up waiting the same 2 hours on election day, but voting early also gives me a much-relished way to get rid of telephone campaigners lickety-split. =)

Harris County has 4 million people, 2 million of which are registered voters. There were 3 dozen early polling places that processed 3/4 of a million people over the last 2 weeks. There are 874 precincts, and each one will have a polling place on election day. That works out to an average of about 2300 people per polling place on election day without early voting. The place where I early voted was processing about that many people every day for the last week on about 15-20 machines (but it was #6 out of 36 for traffic), so without early voting, in theory, I could have been waiting just as long on election day. Seems I should have waited for election day after all, as now it'll only be an average of some 1400 people per polling place if everyone votes. Parking there sucks, though. =)

Here we only have computer voting (you're not allowed a paper ballot here unless you meet very specific qualifications to vote absentee, which pisses me off), so the early voting setup was pretty slick - they just ran our driver's license magstrips through a reader on a computer to pull up the info, the computer prints out a 4-digit access code and a sticker for the signature book (which you sign), you take the code to any machine, and it brings up the right ballot. The girl in front of me in line was from the other end of the county and was still able to vote here with no problem.

[melete.livejournal.com]

I'm a little curious about it myself. Most everyone I know who voted early in Chicago did so in the same time it does to vote on election day - all told about 5 minutes.

Those that stood on line for some time appeared to do so because there was some snafus with the voting machine(s). There were also a couple who said that there was sometimes a paperwork fluff because people were all from different precincts.

I'm amazed that other states had such demand that they need to extend hours or the period for early voting.

I chose to wait until Tuesday because my ward is shaped funnily. As such, my poling place serves approximately the four blocks surrounding my house, which isn't very many people. I'm also curious to see what it feels like to be out there on Tuesday. It is bound to be an interesting day.

[anmorata.livejournal.com]

I can't speak for what's normal, as I've voted absentee in the last handful of elections. This will be my first major election voting in person, and I'm making a big, huge deal about it. I don't care how long I have to wait. :)

To the best of my knowledge, though, early voting is rather new here, and given that it's the weekend, it fits around a lot of people's schedules better than a Tuesday. Additionally, you don't have to worry about such factors as 1 day of long lines or the weather, (I've seen many people posting with things such as, "Early voting line long, will come back later".. and they do. They're not driven off by it because they can return later that same day, or the next day, or the next.. etc), either of which might drive potential voters away.

[kambriel.livejournal.com]

All I know, is with how long (I won't say "bad" because at least it's for a good reason) the lines have been in many areas ~ including my own, I wonder how the heck they would have ever handled this vast influx of people if everyone was voting on a single day? There's no feasible way from what I've seen in some places.

In the past (in Salem), I always walked in and walked out with no wait at all. This was the first time I remember since the '80's when I accompanied my mom to a polling place that I had anything close to such a long line.

Obama was smart asking people to vote early. I think his reasonings were many-fold...