fine whine

Well, I went and voted today. I left a half hour early or so, figuring it wouldn't take too long to take care of my business and be off to work.

I couldn't have been more wrong. When I walked in the door I saw a lengthy line. I continued to follow it down the corridor of the school, around a corner and down another hallway. It took me over two hours of standing in line to get to the booth and take my two minutes to vote. I'd meant to bring my Palm, and I could have walked home some four times to get it while waiting.

Once we finally made it into the gym (with only an hour left, or so) there were a number of signs and postings. I saw how small my precinct was and read about the five-minute rule (it's an ordinance, though I forgot the number), looked at a sample ballot, and I looked at the posted list of all registered voters in my precinct. There were 956, two of which were marked as absentees. After checking that I was among them I did some mental math.

Fortunately I had an hour to work it out. I'm slow in the mornings when I haven't eaten my chocolate milk and bagel.

There were three voting machines and just about nine hundred and sixty voters. Assuming that they kept people to a strict five minutes (some were taking longer, very few were taking less time than that) that works out to over twenty-five hours of voting.

Last I checked the polls were only open about twelve or thirteen hours. What will happen to those other people? More than a few had seen the beginning of the line and left impatiently. Stories circulated through the line about a woman who sold her spot (having arrived before 7am) for five bucks.

As I was getting ready to vote I heard one of the volunteers calling headquarters to try to get at least one more machine. I can only hope they have them to spare, though I can but wonder how anyone could expect so many voters to use so few machines.

To any Americans not yet at the polls, I recommend Vote Smart as a relatively unbiased and informative source to find out more about the candidates. I was able to look at voting records and detailed questionnaires from many of the potential representatives and it helped my choices immensely.