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

[snobahr.livejournal.com]

I've had to wait up to ten minutes, in the past. But once I was in the booth, I already had my pre-marked sample ballot marked, and just boom-boom-boom, I was out of there within 5 minutes (I double-checked my ballot after marking each page's worth of votables, to make certain I had indicated the correct-for-me choices). I'm still not certain how we're going to deal with it tomorrow, if I'm going to head to my polling place with or without chronovius, since he hasn't yet received his sample ballot (but I did), and as of last Thursday, wasn't showing up online.

Although, he did register himself as Democrat, this year... I wonder if that is a factor in the delay...