11 hours
Early voting opened Monday in Georgia for the 2020 general election — but the first day was marred by technical issues and lines that in some locations stretched more than five hours long, particularly in the Atlanta metro area.
FIVE HOURS. Can you imagine?
But that’s not even the worst.
Back to NPR:
Voters arriving in the morning at Atlanta’s State Farm Arena, the home of the NBA’s Hawks — and the state’s largest early voting site, with 300 voting machines — encountered technical issues, which election officials blamed on problems with the electronic poll pads.
So they didn’t test them ahead of time?
Looks like voter suppression to me.
Pure voter suppression. Especially when considering people are having to take a day off work to vote. By contrast I voted last weekend in our election (early vote since our official day is this Saturday). Walked to and from the polling station which was 1300m away. Back home 32 minutes after I left.
Glad I’m in no hurry to vote. Nov. 3rd sounds good to me, and I can walk there.
I’m glad that we live in Washington state, with its proven mail-ballot system.
One thing about my town is that there is little effort at voter suppression – probably because we are a white town, with only a tiny minority community. I have not waited in line to vote for years. The last time I had to wait was in Oklahoma City, and then only about 45 minutes. I hated it. I would not be able to wait five hours; my anxiety would kick up. I can’t tolerate crowds for more than about three minutes these days.
I have never had to wait at my designated polling place since I lived here (Atlanta) in the past 6 years, whether in the general, the primary, mid terms or special elections. Not even once. Just lucky I suppose. :)
Rob @1 Currently my polling place is also a mere 1.6 km away, so yeah, 35-40 min. for me too.
I’m not sure what the early voting panic is about here, but I think NPR found some worst case stuff to report on. I wouldn’t go to Philips Arena (State Farm, whatever) to vote anyway, it must be some kind of social event, or some kind of see and be seen voting for extraverts and wokesters type of thing. Ridiculous.
So what’s your point, twiliter? You think these voters are just stupid people who wasted 5-12 hours of their lives because they’re not smart like you? Or they chose to do it in the hopes that they’d make NPR?
Yes, of course NPR reports on the worst stories of polling wait times. News organizations also tend to have a “bizarre” tendency to ignore all the schools that DIDN’T have shootings today, and all the buildings that DIDN’T burn down, and all the people who were arrested by cops without being shot or beaten. Heck, what about all the people who DIDN’T get COVID today?!
Yep, idiots one and all. :D Honestly, if someone thinks voting early makes a difference, and is willing to brave crowds of people to do it, more power to them. I dunno if they are fame seekers, but they are definitely more people oriented than I am. Maybe going to the grocery store afterwards with their ‘I voted’ sticker gives them some kind of social status bump.
The only thing that surprised me was how white the voters in the video are. Usually the powers that be don’t allow such abysmal wait times outside of poor black neighborhoods.
I think twiliter sort of has a point in that it’s a sure bet that the first day of early voting will feature longer lines than, say, the middle of early voting. Still disgraceful, though.
An early vote is a more likely vote; you don’t have something turn up the day of (whatever it might be) and miss it. It’s not like election day is some sort of holiday.
BKiSA, I don’t usually vote early, because I am waiting for the locals to finish their interviews with the newspapers, the discussions about the state/local questions, most of which our paper prints late, because like everyone else they focus on national. Some areas I am sure get their local information better, but here it can be difficult to find out who stands for what until the paper interviews them, because a lot of them have truly abysmal websites. To me, early voting has its place, but I suspect for a lot of people, it’s just that they are only interested in one main thing who is president. I really want to know as much as possible about my City Council candidates (I don’t know either of them this time), and especially school board, which is usually one of the last groups we hear from. In this area, we have to watch carefully, since a lot of parents sending their kid to Catholic school or homeschooling their kid because the schools don’t pray enough attempt to get on the school board where they could have a major negative effect on policy.
I wish people would pay more attention to their local and state elections.
Well I’m not waiting for Biden to have to defend some hare brained October surprise, and I already don’t like Kamala’s twitter pronoun solidarity, but I’m not sure anything would make me vote for Donnie Dipshit. I just don’t feel enthusiastic enough about voting to run out and do it early.