The Primary: Big lines and long waits in Chesterfield
It sounds like there were more long waits and long lines at the polling places yesterday. I know I got to my polling place at 4:00 and there were about 30 people in front of me which equaled about 20 minutes. I even heard on the news that some places ran out of ballots which just unacceptable. Marcus Carter had a similar experience and remarks:
I think conservatively, I witnessed 100 or more voters decide against voting in a hour and 15 minute period.
Read more about his experience at http://inpursuitofperfection.typepad.com
Sounds like they will be counting all the hand written ballots after all. Which is good. Lesson learned - I’m sure it won’t happen again come November. As for people leaving because they saw a line… Well I guess it’s your right to not vote - just as it is your right too. Get over it - wait in line - and Vote next time…
I’m curious whether or not those unmarked paper ballots would stand a legal challenge. I’m glad that the registrar has indicated they should be counted, and frankly I agree they should. Something tells me though, this process doesn’t quite add up to guidelines in the state legislature.
As to waiting in lines, the idea here is to open the voting process to all Americans who would like to exercise their right to vote. We’d like to remove obstacles and not be apathetic about real world issues. Parents who picked up kids from daycare and then stopped by to vote (I saw this one several times) are not going to be able to tough it out in line indefinitely. The examples go on. Lines are part of the process, we know that. But we need to continue to work to make the process as efficient as possible.
And let’s not kid ourselves here, running out of ballots is not an acceptable part of this process. Gov’t should work according to the will of the people. Let’s not tell people to “get over it”. Let’s “get involved” if we don’t like it and let’s “bring solutions” along with our criticisms!
Grace and Peace.
There is no sane excuse for why this happened. Haake made a terrible error in judgement. With all the reports of extremely high turnout across the country it seems like they would have been better prepared. I think they will be come November.
When I went to vote (7:00 AM), there was a 15/20 minute wait (not that bad in my opinion), but several people commented wondering why there was not more than one line…. not sure if the process is different at the polling location as we had moved a year ago.