Voted in Chicago today. There was an hour long line. Diversity young people. Lots o Cub fans.

[mucifer]

Voting is in record numbers.

I know Tammy will win the senate. Kirk really blew it in that debate.

But, our evil republican governor spent millions of his own money to buy the state legislature. (He bought the governorship). It's unreal how this can happen. Rahm did the same. They come in and spend millions of their own money and get billionaires to give them more. Then they get the position they want.

Fingers crossed that these tactics don't work.

[pat_k]

1. Big turnout is great, but lines are unacceptable.

Something I posted last night:

Title: LINES need to = FINES for SOS/County

LINES are no different that the POLL TAX.

TIME = MONEY. The idiom is part of the vernacular for a reason. Time is VALUABLE.

If we're going to allow lines, we might as well just bring back the poll tax.

We need federal law that sets a maximum allowable wait time and penalizes state or county agencies responsible for under-allocating resources in a way that creates wait times that exceed the maximum allowed.

...

More in OP.
http://www.democraticunderground.com/12512586226

[mucifer]

3. Yeah an hour wait isn't good. But, at least it was only an hour and people can vote Saturday Sunday

Monday and election day. It's much better than some other states. But, at the poll they predicted long lines tomorrow.

[pat_k]

4. A maximum allowable...

... could be an hour, or 90 minutes, or more. in shaping such a law, some consensus on what constitutes 'excessive" would need to be reached.

I'd say anything over an hour is excessive.

The point is to make a clear statement that lines are unacceptable, and to motivate election officials to go above and beyond to make sure every voter can easily cast their vote and have that vote accurately counted.

Any such law would need to make exceptions if lines are related to factors that could not reasonably be foreseen. And size of fine could be based on how many, and who, are affected. If only a "certain class" of voter is affected, I think a higher penalty would be in order. If many locations are affected, the more likely the problem is systemic, which would call for a more severe penalty.

Some thing goes for "avoidability." I would think an exemption should be applied in cases that voters have have opportunities to vote later -- opportunities that give people a real choice as to whether or not to wait in the line. (I think I would object to giving an exemption if the voter "could have voted earlier." Even procrastinators need to be able to easily cast their vote and election officials should be ready for them.)

I'm sure there are other details that would need to be hammered out. What I would love to see is some effort to get the basic idea off the ground.

[kacekwl]

2. Yea, more voters is good,

Sorry for you though.