Vote. Do it. Take your kid. Let the kid push the switch.
It's going to be all politics here today with only a sprinkling of Hurricane posts. I'll be sitting in front of the computer with the TV on in the background pretty much all day.
This is a geeky paradise.
UPDATE: I'm hearing stories of hour long waits at the polling stations. What are you seeing?
Apt. 11d 
Here in VA my husband voted as soon as the polls opened and still had to wait 45 minutes. People are saying the lines are longer than 2008 when they were REALLY REALLY long. I’ve set aside 3 hours this afternoon and hoping that is sufficient time.
We’re going to an election party tonight. My girls made cupcakes — half with blue frosting and half with red — though the crowd we’re watching with is pretty conservative, so I expect we’ll run out of Red cupcakes first.
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I think that explains why Ginsburg’s photo was on my wife’s iPad last night. I was wondering.
Anyway, it was the longest line I ever voted in, but it was still only ten minutes. Three districts vote at my place and the lines were much longer for the other ones. It’s always been that way, possibly because the district boundaries were drawn two centuries ago and never adjusted to equalize the populations.
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As I said on Twitter, we never have to wait hours to vote in MA, and we switched from 4 polling places to 1 (though I guess that we still have the 4 voting machines) in our town. I do not understand why communities can’t figure out how to make it possible for people to vote more quickly. These waits are unconscionable.
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Also, I may vote Republican in one race. The Democratic challenger was revealed to have plagiarized, and the professor in me just can’t support that. This Republican is fairly old-school Republican, i.e., not insane Tea Party Republican, so it’s not too much of a sacrifice for my principles.
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We were in and out of our polling place in less than 4 minutes. We live about 4 blocks away from our polling place and we passed two additional polling places before hitting ours. I had three little “electioneers” with me, two of them very worried that “Rom Mittney” was going to shut down PBS (and more importantly pbskids.org) and so we had to vote for “Barracker Bama”. Trying to explain to them that everyone’s vote is private and I would not be sharing mine was a bit of a pickle.
Thankfully, we had very sweet and patient polling volunteers who found the girls delightful rather than subversive (a worry as we live in a strong Republican district) and the girls learned more about how we vote as well as being the proud sticker wearers of “I Voted” today.
But what kind of messed up country do we live in where we have a polling place on almost every corner (and the wait is less than 5 minutes) and somewhere else – people have to wait for hours on end. There is something seriously wrong with that kind of inequity.
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Here in Indiana, my husband was at our polling place when it opened at 6am. He waited for 40 minutes. I went at 8:30 and was out of there in 20 minutes.
The longest wait for a vote was in my home state of Ohio in 2004. I waited 90 minutes, but I knew people who waited for four hours that year.
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WI report: Helped out at the school/polling place this morning for two hours; lines were not too long. Observed significant increase in same-day voter registration than earlier elections. So far, I’d say more voters than the recall election in May. The President and Bruce visited us yesterday, perhaps that caused a bump? Other polling places in Madison on my Twitter/FB feeds are reporting very long lines.
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No lines in my suburban Philadelphia polling place–last time the lines were more than an hour long. Whatever that means. Hard to tell–it’s a republican district but trending more democratic.
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Cincinnati, OH report: total time spent less than 15 minutes, at 8am, in a wealthy in-city neighborhood. We vote in the children’s room of the library, and there’s another polling place at the fire station four doors down, and several others very very close as well. My 6 year old son was surprised to learn there was (a lot) more on the ballot than just the presidential election.
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Only a ten minute wait in South Jersey. Brought Youngest Raggirl to vote. A friend of mine (who she didn’t know) was working the polling station. “Are you voting today?” he asks her. “Yes,” she says. “Do you know who you are voting for?” And she gets this look on her face like he just physically slapped her! She turns completely red, with eyes that are silently shouting, “You are not allowed to ask me that!” Poll worker friend quickly ends the small talk. Youngest Raggirl takes her secret ballot VERY seriously.
Then, I dropped off the kids and came to the office in Bucks County, PA for a while — and I was the only one here.
“Where is everybody,” I ask. “Still in line,” is the response from the one secretary in ear shot. People started trickling in around 10:00 or 10:30. Sixty+ minute waits were the general consensus around here.
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Just voted. Absolutely no wait at all. My ritual is to count all the votes (by looking at the voting machine numbers)–about 4500 votes in my town of, I think, 9600+ registered voters as of 3:30 pm.
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Our ballots were dropped off in the ballot box near our house on Sunday (before a kiddo’s soccer game). No wait at all. In a lot of houses, it’s traditional to let the kids fill out the bubbles (usually they’ll only do it for the top of the ticket).
Apparently it’s possible to tell whether you’ve voted yet by tracking the ballots somehow. I heard this morning that someone who voted 3 weeks ago stopped getting the phone calls that have been driving me crazy for the last week.
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Zero wait here in suburban NJ. The polling place had moved due to power outages, but the poll dudes said that turnout was high anyway. Very smooth process considering the problems.
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This is one thing that makes me happy to vote in an all vote by mail state. I voted several weeks ago in the comforts of my own home, and could stop and look things up as I went. On vote by mail, I’m agnostic on the potential for voter fraud vs. getting more votes. On the one hand, I agree with Laura that it does make it slightly easier for someone to vote for a senile relative, though on the other, it really increases voter turnout, and lets a lot of people vote who wouldn’t be able to otherwise, especially the elderly and disabled. On balance I’m probably for it, since I’m not sure the potential fraud would widespread or systematic enough to influence the election.
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My sister voted in Brooklyn. She said people can vote for state and nation-wide races in any precinct on a limited ballot, and if they want to vote for local things they have to go to their home precinct. She waited in line for 45 minutes in 30 degree weather, and some of her friends waited for over 2 hours. She said most people are determined to vote, but some people have been turned off by the lines and the cold. The Rockaways were a disaster though, and she guesses turnout will be very low there. A generator sent to power the machines didn’t have gas, and after an hour, they gave up and had people write down their votes on paper. Eventually they hooked it up to a car battery.
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My worry about voting my mail, though I love it personally, is the possibility for coercion. One of the benefits to in person voting in a closed booth is that if someone tries to coerce a vote or buy a vote, they have no means of verifying your vote. With vote by mail, though, a boss could set his employees down together at a worktable and have them all vote together. Given bosses now actively suggesting candidates (ala the NYT article), it doesn’t seem implausible. And, it doesn’t have to be illegal, if the coercion is subtle enough (like bosses selling girl scout cookies to employees).
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I had an hour and a half wait to vote in mid-Manhattan. Lots of people came here from other voting precincts, we were told. But we waited while sitting in the school auditorium, and had wifi so it wasn’t so bad.
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It’s over before Carson, if Carson were still on.
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