As a non-American, I don’t know exactly how your polling works, but why am I seeing “plan your voting day” or “set a voting strategy” like they’ve done on the Cards Against Humanity voting campaign?

Where I live, it’s just show up on voting day and cast your ballot, or ask for a mail in ballot, or go to a special voting station if you need (or want) to vote early. Is it the same in the US, and this is just getting people to gather those last pieces of information early and put a reminder in the calendar? Or is there more to it than that?

Thanks!

  • southsamurai
    4•1 month ago

    It really depends on location and turnout.

    Here in my town, the longest I’ve ever waited was a minute or two. Small population, and plenty of booths.

    When I lived in a city, I only voted twice, but both times I was waiting maybe ten minutes plus a little. That was, as I was told, average for that polling place. It was a church basement (not in the dank and drippy way lol), so it was a tad small for the number of people in the district. But, over at a school gym that was a polling place, I had a friend wait nearly a half hour. Despite the bigger space, the turnout was huge, and not typical for that specific polling place.

    They try to make sure a space is big enough (when everything is working right) for the district, but it doesn’t always work perfectly.

    Then, you’ve got locations where the voting organizers are willing to fuck over a specific district and the polls will be under staffed, have too few booths, and may have other impediments to getting things done efficiently.

    So it’s not really a single factor that goes into the crazy wait times. Nor is an hour in line the default.