Question for Americans

[pyat]

Why are voting lines in the U.S. so long? I'm reading about six hour waits in some early voting places, and I seem to recall tales of "lines around the block" in the last election. Are there only a small number of voting stations?

I've never heard anyone up here complain about waiting in line to vote - or, if they did it was a matter of "It took me 15 minutes to get to the polling station! What a mad house!" sort of thing.

Do we do things differently, or is this just a matter of freak incidents getting media attention?

Comments

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

That's true, but in Canadian elections we also tend to have more candidates to choose from in each particular race, and I wonder how much time that takes amongst unprepared voters. It would be interesting to see how long voting takes amongst unprepared voters in both countries... (i.e. those who have to make up their minds when in the booth, as opposed to coming in, marking their already chosen choice, and leaving.)

[thebitterguy]

Oh, man. I would SO punch someone like that in the back of the head. HARD.

That's worse than going to a movie theatre and not knowing what you want to see when you get to the ticket desk.

[hillarygayle.livejournal.com]

I agree. There is NO sense in that. With the amount of TIME the American elections take, and as long as the campaign season is, there is simply no excuse for not having made up your mind by the time you get to the polling place. Hell, do a freaking INTERNET SEARCH the day before, if nothing else. GRRR.

[rowyn]

Given the time spent on the presidential election, yes. Given the time spent on local ballot initiatives, which receive next to no attention in the media? (Unless they're blocking gay marriage or something). I'm not going to fault someone for showing up knowing who they want to vote for in some of the elections, but not familiar with all the candidates for 15 races and 5 ballot iniatives that are on the ballot.

And yeah, turnout's the biggest factor in lines for presidential elections. I took about 30 minutes getting through the line at my polling place. Which did "wrap around the block", but it was moving very quickly. Sometimes the line length is misleading. It was also much shorter when I left, suggesting a lot of people were there near the opening out of fear of a crowd.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I can see that, but there are almost certainly cases where in-the-booth choice is inevitable, and would fall into two categories: those who really are making up their minds in the booth, and those who have made up their mind before arriving, but need assistance making that choice in the booth.

I have no idea who the latter class of problems is solved: how, for example, do illiterate voters manage in Canada where our ballots have only alphabetical characters on them, and not party icons? Presumably, illiterate voters have to be familiar with the shapes that make up a candidates name? Is there a procedure for "assisting" voters in the booth for those that need assistance (for example voters with physical conditions that preclude them from making the actual mark), oh mister bitter elections volunteer guy?

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

They might recognize the number and length of the words in the party affiliation. I don't know how they'd fare in municipal elections, though : P.

Although, frankly, an illiterate person's political disenfranchisement is probably pretty low on their list of problems in a North American nation...

[thebitterguy]

Man, you know I was too sick to go to the election. I don't believe the concerns of illiterate votes were discussed in training. They were MUCH more concerned about what to do about women in veils.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

This is a not in-considerate concern, I suppose. Are women wearing veils not allowed to remove their veils in front of other women? I don't know much about the finer points of that bit of religious costuming.

[archai.livejournal.com]

In our elections, in my experience, if you haven't made up your mind by the time you get to the polls you aren't going to, and moreover, you're probably not actually going to the polls anyway. You just got lost on the way to the grocery store, and will merely turn around in the parking lot.

If you don't know who you're voting for by the time you vote, there's nothing in the booth to save you. Just names on a ballot. If you're actually deciding who's going to lead the country by the curvature of the fonts each name is printed in, please, don't vote.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

there's nothing in the booth to save you

In Canada a candidate's party affiliation is printed on the ballot along with his name, I believe, or on a notice paper affixed to the inside of the voting station. I would have thought that for many voters this was the principle detail that they required, and in fact, knowing the candidate's name ahead of time was not as relevant for them.

So, rather than knowing who the Grit (or Tory, or whoever) was, they at least had to search down the list for "the one who belongs to that party".

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

along with his name

Or in the case of ridings not mine, her name.

[lee-in-limbo.livejournal.com]

I can remember in previous elections where the party name was not attached to the candidate name. I can't remember if that was federal, provincial or municipal though.

Lee.

[archai.livejournal.com]

Mmm. Well, when your political landscape consists for all intents and purposes of two and only two parties, within which there is a veritable smorgasbord of political ideologies, it becomes much trickier. Certainly US voters still go by party (some of them), which is denoted on the ballot, but toeing the party line across the board is increasingly dangerous if you don't know where it's running this year. The chameleonic nature of the Republican party lately, especially, is problematic; the GOP/DNC separation is only good enough to give you a "vaguely left" versus "vaguely right" indication. Here, generally, voting blindly by party alone is what we call "stupid," and for moderates, is impossible.

Perhaps it's not so bad up there where you have things separated out between party lines more closely approximating sanity.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

we also tend to have more candidates to choose from

This statement should not be so strong. I assume this to be the case, but I don't know it to be true. I think you're probably completely correct that simply by virtue of deciding more categories of things on each ballot, you make the voting choice take longer (i.e. one race with fifteen candidates probably produces shorter voting time than five races with three candidates in each): the simple act of multiplying the number of marks the voter needs to make makes the time longer, let alone adding to the complexity of the choice involved.

[hillarygayle.livejournal.com]

This is true, and I'll add my experience to it: in all the elections in which I've voted, you've got the big elections (presidential, senate, representatives, etc), the state elections, maybe some local stuff (which is almost impossible to find information on, and so very difficult to make up one's mind properly), and then ballot initiatives. The ballot initiatives take up the most time, because I read them carefully. Some of them are worded extremely poorly, and you have to re-read them a few times to make sure you want to vote on them (unless you've done your research ahead of time, which I recommend but hardly anyone actually does). I came damn close to voting FOR the Arkansas hetero marriage amendment when I intended to vote AGAINST it. Ever since then I've been adamant about finding the wordings ahead of time.

[forthright.livejournal.com]

Most of the elections I've voted in have had between five and eight candidates, and I find it hard to believe that anyone who goes in undecided/unprepared realistically is choosing between more than two of them (given that when you have eight, at least three or four are fringe parties).

[easyalchemy.livejournal.com]

Indeed - voting took me slightly longer than usual this year because I was so surprised to see a name on the ballot I didn't recognize; who knew we had a person running for the Marxist-Leninist Party? Not me, anyway. I didn't consider voting for them, but it took me aback.