Me: Ireland - Approximately 2 minutes until poll in hand is the longest.
I’ve been seeing long lines for the US elections even for early voting. Seems completely unnecessary.
I always do early voting. Usually no wait but unfortunately I picked a sunny weekend day to do it once, had to wait 15 minutes.
Just got back from voting, no wait. It’s about a 10 minute walk from my house to the polling place. They had 3 lanes open for people to check in, only 1 was occupied. I was in and out in under 5 minutes. Longest I’ve ever had to wait was probably 45-60 minutes in 2016 but that was at a different polling place that was always poorly organized.
Two and a half hours early voting in Chicago
My first presidential election was in 1980. I waited almost six hours to vote for Jimmy Carter in Iowa City, Iowa, USA (a medium-sized college town).
It was surprisingly festive. There were people walking the line handing out water and snacks. There were several musicians performing at various points along the line.
Ten minutes, I guess? Brazil.
Hard of hearing old lady, right before me, was struggling to vote in the 2022 elections. Apparently she typed the numbers for her candidates but they didn’t go through. All five of them (governor, state deputy, president, federal deputy, senator).
Typically it takes 2~3 minutes though.
Portsmouth, Virginia here. The early in-person voting line was around the block and took over 2 hours to get through.
Granted it’s not as long as others, but it is a good sign when early voting lines are so long.
That’s not a good sign. That’s a sign that your government wants to keep people from voting. There should be more voting locations. Like, 5 to 10 times more.
Maybe 2-5mins, if they had to sort something out first with a person in front of me
Usually I go in, have a line of 2-3 people at most, and just tell my name and address, go vote and I’m usually done in like 5mins altogether - 10-15mins for the process is already something I’ve never experienced and would pretty much get to my nerves…
(Austria)
About the same here. (Finland)
Houston, Texas. 4.5 hours
The lines are intentional to discourage you from voting
North Houston Suburbs, no more than 20 minutes.
ditto when i moved to austin.
anecdotally: the length of the lines correlate with the wealth of the voting district. i think that texas is like arizona & georgia in that when the lines are long; they’re REALLY long compared to the long lines i experienced in california, new york, & illinois; but the short line places always seemed to be much emptier on election day for some reason.
GOOD GOD!!!
Fwiw it was less than 10 mins in the affluent neighborhoods I lived near San Francisco, California and New York and 1.5 hours in the poor neighborhoods in those same cities
That’s an interesting one. I live in a small town (~10K). It’s a fairly middle-class suburb of Dublin and the only place I’ve ever voted (but many times). Makes me curious if it’s different in other neighbourhoods.
i’ve lived in 11 cities in this country over the decades chasing work to maintain my health insurance and my experienced seemed normal to my neighbors who had lived there most of their lives as well.
most of those cities had a large proportion of transplants like me and their experiences mirrored mine.
~1 minute here in Austria, usually it takes longer to find the right room than to wait in line when I’ve found it
I’ve never had to wait long in New Orleans or DC except for odd circumstances but those places essentially have predetermined elections.
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During the pandemic in New Orleans, they made the Smoothie King Center the main early voting location. That took a couple of hours but in normal years, I vote at a fire department and it just takes a few minutes.
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In 2008 in DC, I lived near the White House and my polling place was an historic AME church that was a spot on the Underground Railroad. Every global news channel with staff in DC — so all of them — was trying to interview people. So, I’m not sure that was the voting system’s fault so much as global media asking everyone for a sound bite. (I got interviewed by Japan’s NHK but I didn’t make the cut. If I want to get on Japanese TV, I guess I’ll have to go on a game show.)
But I’ve never lived in a competitive state or district. DC doesn’t have real representation in Congress and Louisiana’s 2nd district is drawn for Voting Rights Act compliance reasons so it’s also not typically competitive. (Louisiana also elects state/local officials in non-presidential years so it’s rarely got much on the ballot besides President and maybe an amendment or two. This year, we voted on whether offshore wind farms would participate in the coastal wetlands restoration program like offshore oil rigs.)
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Oregon here 0 minutes. My ballot is delivered in the mail and I can drop it off at the post office or ballot drop box.
You can even stick it back into your mail box (with the flag up), and the mail man should pick it up.
Colorado, same. I voted 3 weeks ago.
US- Wife went 30 minutes after polls opened and ended up waiting an hour today. New location for us, so don’t know if this is normal here. I’ll edit later with my experience.
I remember rushing home, changing out of my uniform and jumping in line at the local library… and I stood there for like 4-6 hours in the freezing cold. Rosario Dawson, the actress, actually came by with donuts, back before the republicans outlawed providing food and water to people in voting lines. I actually took a picture of my wife with her, she was so kind. My wife and I were taking turns hiding in the car to stay warm, and saving a place in line. I couldn’t believe how cold and how long the line was. The shitty thing was that it was also extremely windy, the cold bit hard.
This was Atlanta, GA probably for the Biden/Trump election in 2020. I’ve voted early ever since, I walk in and out within like 15 minutes now. I’m not doing 4-6 hour lines ever again.
Edit: poll workers actually came out and designated someone as the last voter, and we stayed in line well past the normal close time. But, they had to get the last person who showed up before close.
poll workers actually came out and designated someone as the last voter
I did wonder about this. That’s cool to know and seems like a fair way to run it if you’re in the line before the station closes. Thanks for the insight.
Awesome about Rosario Dawson too!
The shitty thing is, the long lines are by design. Election officials are regularly closing polling locations in inner cities because ‘they don’t have the funding to keep so many open’, when the state government chooses not to fund them. Rural areas have always had quick in-and-out voting merely due to how many people they’re providing for. While increasing the wait times at inner city polling places causes some voters to either not get the chance to vote because either they’re not allowed to at some point, or the extra votes aren’t sent up because they were too late… or it causes people to go home instead of wait in the freezing cold ass line for 4-6 hours. Some people were complaining about 8 hour lines that year.
They cheat to win however they can.
<5min Germany
Maybe 5 minutes in Germany
