and the voting issues begin...

[graylocks]

$tevie wrote:
I still don't get WHY there are long lines. Seriously. Maybe people ought to be more considerate of those whom the early voting is intended to help.

According to the Constitutuon (The Congress may determine the Time of chusing the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.) there is no legal obligation to grant early voting and if it becomes too burdensome and controversial I imagine it will just go away.

with all due respect, $tevie, much has changed since the Constitution was written to institute one national voting day. at that time we were a much smaller country and less than half the people were allowed to vote since women and slaves couldn't. Tuesday was decreed election day so as not to interfere with market days or require a family to have to travel into town on Sunday. and it was the whole family and town as election day was a major civic celebration.

fast forward a few hundred years where a lot more citizens are eligible to vote, the lines can be long, kids need to be dropped off at school or daycare (here in GA it IS still a schoolday unlike when I grew up) and employers really aren't interested that you're late because the line was long or you need to leave early because the polls are closing. times have changed; voter participation rates are way too low. we need to expand the voting time window to account for an expanded population with pressing contemporary needs. We used to inaugurate the President in March; it took that long to count the votes and get the new Prez to Washington. The inauguration was changed to January as we realized that kind of lead time was no longer necessary in the modern era. 'Election Day' needs to change with the times also.

and cbelt3, i think your comment that Republican voters are better organized. We plan for it, and do it is just as smugly dismissive as my counter that Republicans behave that way because they are soul less robots who do exactly as their mind-control overlords tell them. gross generalizations can cut both ways.

[decay]

if we can have a national holiday for Columbus Day, why not a day off for Election Day? schools, banks, you name it. close 'em down.

[graylocks]

decay wrote:
if we can have a national holiday for Columbus Day, why not a day off for Election Day? schools, banks, you name it. close 'em down.

that would solve nothing because many businesses would still be open and it would be burdensome to many as a lot of folks don't have paid holidays.

[deckeda]

Not a bad idea, decay. Celebrate the day for what it is and for what it represents. It could certainly use some good PR.

Then again, early voters like me would be whining about businesses shut down and so on ... :patriot:

edit: [beaten to it by graylocks]

I'd just as soon email or tweet my vote if I could do so safely and accurately. Get 'er done and move on.

[cbelt3]

Lemon Drop wrote:
As each election goes by I wonder more why more states have not adopted complete vote by mail, like Washington and Oregon.

:agree:

[Dennis S]

1/4 to 1/3 of the electorate have voted early over several days. If there are long lines during early voting, I would think there would be really long lines on Tuesday.

[Mike Sellers]

Instead of a weekend, have an entire weekend for voting. It works in other countries.

[Lemon Drop]

My mom did early voting in South Carolina last week and waited in a very long line, she was quite surprised. Said she'd never seen anything like it.

[swampy]

$tevie wrote:
I still don't get WHY there are long lines. Seriously. Maybe people ought to be more considerate of those whom the early voting is intended to help.

The Florida ballot is 3 (legal) pages long this year. There are 11 constitutional ammendments that take about 20 minutes just to read let alone comprehend. I studied the issues and took a cheat sheet in with my choices on the ammendments just to make it go faster, but it still took me 10 minutes to complete the ballot.

Of course HuffPo spins it as voter suppression of Democratic votes and it's all some Republican's fault. I'm sure there were Republicans and Independents that got caught up in the mess as well as Democrats.

[graylocks]

Dennis S wrote:
1/4 to 1/3 of the electorate have voted early over several days. If there are long lines during early voting, I would think there would be really long lines on Tuesday.

keep in mind that early voting lines may be long because there are far fewer polling places made open for advance voting than on election day and fewer machines are available at them. i had to drive a few miles to a county rec center to advance vote. on election day my official polling place is only a few blocks away. the first day i tried to vote the line was longer than i anticipated. it probably would have taken a few hours. i came back at a different time a few days later; the line was considerably shorter and the process took about 40 minutes. in 2008 i voted absentee as i anticipated long lines and i just don't have that kind of time. some folks don't have the stamina, either.