I went down to the Doubletree hotel in San Pedro, CA on Saturday, the first day of regular in-person voting. There was no line, and no delay in getting my ballot. The county registrar had mailed me a form with a bar code to be scanned, so there was no delay at all at all in signing in. The only thing that took much time was getting through a long ballot with, I think, 28 items, including school board seats, multiple ballot initiatives, and of course all the political offices.

The new electronic voting machines print out a ballot which come out of the machine. Then when you have checked it over and push the button, it is sucked up into the machine, the screen lights up with "You voted," and some guy comes running over to give you the "I voted" sticker.

The only issue I have with this system -- developed to provide added security apparently, which includes a paper trail -- is that for some offices, you sometimes have to scroll through two or three screens to see all the candidates. It took a moment's getting used to (you have to learn to click the "more" button) but it's not rocket surgery.

I'm guessing that the reason there was no line was that 6.5 million people have already voted so far in this state. I guess all the anxious voters and people who wanted to get their vote by mail ballot in the box have already done so. Those of us who waited to do things the old fashioned way may actually end up being in the minority.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/2020 08:35PM by Ca Bob.

Quote
Ca Bob
I'm guessing that the reason there was no line was that 6.5 million people have already voted so far in this state. I guess all the anxious voters and people who wanted to get their vote by mail ballot in the box have already done so. Those of us who waited to do things the old fashioned way may actually end up being in the minority.

I told my friend who is voting in person and was trying to vote in the first couple of days of early voting to wait till the middle of the 11 days and things have indeed calmed down. She said she and her husband may just wait and vote on the 3rd, because there will also be many more polling places open here.

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Roswell, GA (Atlanta suburb)

Quote
Ca Bob
I went down to the Doubletree hotel in San Pedro, CA on Saturday, the first day of regular in-person voting. There was no line, and no delay in getting my ballot. The country registrar had mailed me a form with a bar code to be scanned, so there was no delay at all at all in signing in. The only thing that took much time was getting through a long ballot with, I think, 28 items, including school board seats, multiple ballot initiatives, and of course all the political offices.

The new electronic voting machines print out a ballot which come out of the machine. Then when you have checked it over and push the button, it is sucked up into the machine, the screen lights up with "You voted," and some guy comes running over to give you the "I voted" sticker.

The only issue I have with this system -- developed to provide added security apparently, which includes a paper trail -- is that for some offices, you sometimes have to scroll through two or three screens to see all the candidates. It took a moment's getting used to (you have to learn to click the "more" button) but it's not rocket surgery.

I'm guessing that the reason there was no line was that 6.5 million people have already voted so far in this state. I guess all the anxious voters and people who wanted to get their vote by mail ballot in the box have already done so. Those of us who waited to do things the old fashioned way may actually end up being in the minority.

Your county desperately wants you to vote.

Woot! Go California.

Took the ballot up the street to the library where there were two folks there from Registrar of Voters to take ballots. While there seemed like a fairly steady stream (by noon there'd already been close to 80 ballots dropped off according to the count), there was no line. Of course since it was just a drop-off and not an actual polling place, there was no waiting for an empty voting booth. The ballot can be tracked online from initial mailing from the state to its eventual counting at the Registrar's office.

And that's more than can be said for voting in person!

Quote
bfd
Took the ballot up the street to the library where there were two folks there from Registrar of Voters to take ballots. While there seemed like a fairly steady stream (by noon there'd already been close to 80 ballots dropped off according to the count), there was no line. Of course since it was just a drop-off and not an actual polling place, there was no waiting for an empty voting booth. The ballot can be tracked online from initial mailing from the state to its eventual counting at the Registrar's office.

And that's more than can be said for voting in person!

I dropped mine off at a library drop box on Monday evening, no human interaction needed. Tracking showed that it was received, verified and counted by Wed.

More votes!

Early voting in swing states is also unreal:

[electproject.github.io]

Put ours in a drop box yesterday!

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Picasso in his studio after the liberation of Paris, taken by my friend and mentor.

A few days old, but could be telling never-the-less:

[circle.tufts.edu]

.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/25/2020 09:16PM by Ted King.

I voted on Saturday (Florida). Plenty of space around each person, sanitized stylus for the sign-in, sanitized pen for the ballot. No long lines. LOVE early voting.