In lieu of prayers, I’ll make a sacrifice to Yog-Sothoth.
Just to be safe.
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“I’m still undecided.”
– Said no honest person.
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Wait. What? Voting isn’t compulsory. You can choose not to vote and wear the sticker. That’s not fraud. Also, you can do what you want with your sticker. Wear it, put it on something, or give it to your kid.
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In the states and towns I’ve lived (Long Island in NY, Pittsburg in PA, and the suburbs of Boston) the local polling place has always been a school or other local government building (town hall, or an administrative building of some sort). Either walking distance or <2 miles away at the most. I’ve never waited more than half an hour, usually just a few minutes. Growing up, the polls were open into the evening. My parents never took off work to vote, they just went later. I can normally work from home and just go vote while on a break.
This year my state allowed anyone who wanted to, to vote by mail or drop off a ballot in person in a drop box. I dropped mine and my wife’s at the town hall a week ago. I checked online to make sure both were received and accepted.
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my county had one and only one early voting site. today there are 9 polling places and voters in the county are allowed to use any of them to cast their ballots. possibly the one good thing about living in a majority-white county in central texas is that there have been damned few suppression shenanigans here. probably afraid of keeping trump supporters from voting.
at one point there was an armed trump rally across the street from the early voting site but the county sheriff finally told them after three days that they could wave signs but they couldn’t scream at people going to vote with their bullhorns. that and three days of cold rain drove them off and they didn’t come back.
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Non-American here. I am *COUGH* years old. I’ve lived in a city and in small towns, in fairly well-off areas and fairly poor areas. I’ve never had a polling station I couldn’t walk to. The longest I can ever remember waiting is a minute or so, and that’s unusual: I can almost always walk straight up to the desk and get my ballot. The idea of taking even part of a day off work seems absurd: I vote on my way to or from work. Once that was impractical, so I took the kids for a quick walk after dinner to vote.
To this outsider, American democracy seems a bit odd.
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In normal years, I have a short walk and a 30 min wait.
This year because of the pandemic, I voted early in one of the dozen centers in my blue county. No lines for me but the waits had been longer earlier in the week.
The only voting problem I had this year was the frustration of not being able to really darken the Biden/Harris oval with the pen provided or without violating the Vantablack patent.
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Well this non-American (=Austrian) has only ever voted in one city, so I have no clue how far apart the polling places are out in the countryside, but I too consider “3 minutes” to be a “long wait at the polling station”.
We’ve also had mail-in ballots and early ballot drop-off for many years.
But it’s not as if we do things perfectly. A few years ago, we had our presidential elections invalidated by our supreme court because the right-wing candidate who lost by half a percentage point doubted the mail-in result…
So, dear Americans, if the same should happen to you, know that you’re not alone… but please make sure you do end up with the ‘right’ president anyway. In the past 24 hours, we’ve had a terror attack in Vienna and we’ve started another Covid-related partial lockdown. I could really use some good news for a change.
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Wow. Both of those are well out of the ordinary here. Even when voting at the busiest of times, I’ve never seen a queue of more than about five minutes here.
So I looked up the data, and my city organising polling places by council wards. Our one has eight polling places for a population of 32,000 people, and my local one is about five minutes walk from my front door. Obviously, these figures are impacted because I live in a dense city- more rural areas would have to go much further to get to their location.
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I’m pretty sure that @Michael_Black was joking and it was a reference to voter fraud claims by Trump and his supporters.
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Anarchists will cancel my religion!
…if only.
In earlier times my polling place was a five-minute walk, usually to the same place every year, & there was little or no wait to get in. Sometimes it took the poll workers a while to find my name but I usually voted without incident. I do remember the year when ballot box tops were found floating in the bay the day after elections. This year I dropped my ballot in a drop box & got a notice that it’s been received (but no notice as yet that its been counted). The “weirdness” of American elections elsewhere in the country is caused by years of concerted voter supression by Republicans, along with stacking the courts. For instance, a court just ruled that it’s legal for Texas to have just one drop box per county. That includes the city of Houston with 2.3 million people.
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Uh oh. I just reread their post using a sarcasm filter in my head and it can work that way, too. 
(I assumed they weren’t from the US and voting is compulsory where they live. And this is crazy times.)
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Speaking loudly and shouting has been shown in clinical tests to make spreading of COVID much, much worse. As in the sort of thing that negates social distancing and barriers, because the air is so turbulent. Stay safe!
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Wouldn’t that be fantastic? Not as nice as people just being good to one another as a baseline, but at least realizing that their malice causes collateral damage would be so much better.
I will definitely not complain about my 30 minute wait. I have been the beneficiary of rural polling places all my life and this was seriously the first time I ever had to wait longer than it takes to provide my signature. When I see lines and hear about hours-long waits to vote it blows my mind. Voting for me is a minor inconvenience in that it requires me to drive slightly different backroads to or from work and to make an extra stop. Voting for people in some urban districts looks like it’s a heroic effort and a real test of stamina. Folks who put up with that deserve more than a sticker. I hope they get some actual democracy and justice this time around. And a sticker.
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I really, really want taco trucks to overthrow Chick-fil-a
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Agreed. I do hope that people with privileged had their eyes opened in the last couple of years with the long lines in urban areas that have been showing up on the news.
Roger that!
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It was a joke, all the talk about voter fraud shifted to “I voted” stickers.
I can’t quite imagine people wearing a sticker without voting, but there probably are some. People pulled along by trends, but not wanting to bother with the details.
Ihope everything goes okay down there today.
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(Sorry. It made perfect sense after @74hc595’s comment. 
I feel biggly shame. 
)
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