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

[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.