Voting Day

[rain_gryphon]

Well, I had to stand in line two and a half hours to vote. Fortunately it was a large building, and we were inside out of the rain most of the time. I've never had to wait more than ten or fifteen minutes before. In a way it makes the whole thing more memorable. I enjoy the actual voting process - standing in line with one's fellow citizens makes it more meaningful.

I was the 216th from my precinct to vote, and that was at about 12:30, after the polls had been open since 7:30am. They're processing about 43 voters an hour with three machines. Considering that the line closes at 7:30pm, and there are about 1300 voters in my precinct, that's about 40% turnout if it keeps up at that rate all day.

That seems frightfully low to me. I'm guessing there's going to be a huge surge at 5pm, and they'll be voting all night.

We used electromechanical voting machines, which I suppose are reasonably trustworthy. I'd much rather have the old punchcards or Scantron cards. I've never been able to see much merit in the argument that these are unfair because some people are too stupid or careless to use them properly. I'd a lot rather have a paper trail.

Comments

[xolo.livejournal.com]

The new machines are much slower than the old cardpunch stations. Punching a card used to take about two to three minutes, and voting with the machine takes around four and a half. I'm not sure why that is - it took me that long too, though. In theory it should be faster, but between the maintenance that the workers have to do between voters (check some telltale on the back of the machine, record the value, and slot your 'ticket' on the side) and the display itself (not really confusing, per se, but you can't just scan it and punch like you could the butterfly books) it just takes longer.

Turnout is heavier too, I think, but the machines are just plain slower. I'm sure that they'll have more of them in future, if they mean to keep on with those.