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

[zenten.livejournal.com]

My wife was working at a polling station this year, and when I came in to bring her dinner the lineup for her station was taking around 20-30 minutes.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Wow; that's impressive. I guess part of my situation also is that, because of the distance I work away from my home, and the age of my kids, I have tended for the last decade not to vote during peak hours. This would likely also explain the lack of line-ups I've experienced...

[zenten.livejournal.com]

During the day there were weird spikes, so that one station would have a wackload of people, while another would be empty. I think by 6pm though everyone was getting the lineups I described.

We always vote early anyway though.