We were out early this morning, dropping off call sheets at local Dem HQ from last night’s final round of GOTV calls.
I caught the local fire department putting up the American flags along Main Street for Election Day, and snapped a quick picture of small town doings. No line out the door at our local polling place, but plenty of cars in the parking lot and at other locations this morning as well.
Here are some of your reports on voting across the country:
– Solai: "Just returned from voting. No problem here in my little CNY town. And, no new-fangled machines. Push down the lever, open the curtain and you’re done. I have absolute confidence that my vote will be counted. Can’t believe that it’s not that way everywhere. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was intentional."
– Southern Dragon: "Just got back from voting. Number 220. Every page of the sign-in book was filled with signatures or “already voted” stamp for absentee voters. 25 minutes from truck to truck. 5 lines for sign-in with 3-4 people in each line. Constant. Largest turnout I’ve seen in my 25+ years here. Smooth, efficient operation. One guy in front of me didn’t know he had to register to vote. Provisional ballot meet Mr Not Payin’ Attention."
– Raven: "It was a cakewalk at our polling place when we walked by with the pupsters but our neighborhood is pretty politically aware so I’m not sure whatup elsewhere in Athens."
– katymine: "Just dropped my early ballot at the Polls in my precinct (I’m a PC so yes it is mine) and for the first time in 10 years…. I saw lines…… the church parking lot was full and people were parking on the street…. had to walk quite a bit and the line wove around and out the door at 7:10 am….. IN Arizona….. All ages…..Thankfully with my early ballot, I just crashed the line and dropped it off in the box….. WOW there were 20 plus voting stations…… Did not catch how many scanners were assigned."
– previouslyTdash: "Just back in from lily white capital R Atlanta precinct. I took my 6 year old at 6:45 and the line was 50 yards long, an hour wait. So I took him on to school and was back in line at 7:45. Took an hour and 15 minutes. Poll worker, high school friend’s mom, said 1 machine for 185 voters."
How’s the vote going where you are?
Election Protection has updated their blog notes on reported problems nationwide as well:
As of 10am, Election Protection has received over 27,000 calls to the 1-866-OUR-VOTE Hotline since the phones opened at 5:30am this morning.
VIRGINIA
We have seen the situation on the ground in Virginia change drastically over the past hour. Election Protection is calling for the courts to keep the polls open an additional two hours.
MICHIGAN
There are widespread reports of line lines, lack of ample poll workers and general disorganization, resulting in waits as long as two hours. Machine malfunctions are also contributing long lines and in some cases poll workers administering polling through paper ballots. Some voters are expressing concern over the security of their ballots in these situations.
FLORIDA
We have received multiple reports that optical scanning machines are broken in Tallahassee, Tampa, Broward County and Miami-Dade County.
Also, CNN is reporting that FL voters need to fill out the constitutional amendments sections on their ballots or the optical scan machines pop them back out as an undervote. Something to keep in mind…
Stay tuned for more updates.




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Los Angeles: My polling place on the corner of Hollywood Blvd and a residential street has no parking available on the street or in the building’s lot. People are driving away. I told a couple of them go vote by provisional ballot at other locations close by.
One hipster couple with their kids at the local coffee shop around the corner werent sure they had time to vote–they had gotten up early and brought the kids to the polling place for the historic vote but couldnt find parking and had to get the kids to school. The dad said he had to work and didnt know if he could vote now: “I guess I’ll have to be a sinner.”
The polling place’s neighborhood is residential and all the spots are taken by people who live there. The parking lot for the polling place had 40 spaces available which were full (they rent out the rest), and the parking lot attendants were turning people away–the line to get in tovote looked about 150 people. There are gonna be some very frustrated people who wanted to vote today.
I am going out later (I tried 2x so far to get in there–once before the polls opened and again after breakfast) If it stops raining I will walk. If it doesnt and I cant park there, I will go provisional at another less crowded location.
Another problem is that there are parking meters on Hollywood at the front of the polling place, and currently the lines look like an hour-plus..can you imagine getting parking ticket because you were standing in line to vote!
On the plus side, the people who do stick around to vote are slacker tattooed liberals who live close by and can walk(that would be me); however no one should be disenfranchised because of lack of parking/having a real job.
I guess this is why people vote absentee in CA. Hopefully the early voters and absentees will make up for the people who cant get into vote, like the dad I met. The grrr-arrrrgh factor seemed pretty high on the drivers looking for parking, very aggro and cranky–thwarted.
Wow, really frustrating on the parking issue, Lisa! You’d think they would have made some sort of alternate parking arrangement for today, wouldn’t you? Especially given the thought there would be huge turn-out potential…
Columbus, Ohio voting:
This AM the parking was too full. The lines were everywhere. We went back at prime “low tide” of 9:45 AM ( a known fact from my 10+ years as a precinct captain) and the line was short and quick. Parking was quite easy then too.
No problems. There was someone collecting a tally of Dem v Rep voters reporting. The Dem list was three times longer.
BTW, in 2004 I had a baby in tow (nursing baby) and waited over 4.5 hours to vote. Thankfully, most of that time was during his nap. Key word: most.
The main drag in our NoCal suburb has people out with Yes on Prop 2 (animal protections) and both Yes and NO on Prop 8 people waving signs.
Yes on Prop 8 also had caravans of cars riding up and down El Camino with large American flags, out in the rain on Saturday.
My daughter is working the polls and will report later.
Thanks mucho to everyone for the voter updates! Keep ‘em coming!
I did early voting by mail here in SW Washington State–no lines, no hassles. The entire country should move to mail-in voting with a paper ballot. (The only not great thing is that the paper ballots are counted by optical scan machines, but that’s another story.)
Don’t know about local polling places. I can tell you that here in Clark County the number of ballots mailed out were 215,741. As of Sun., Nov. 2nd, the number of voted ballots received by Clark County elections office was 126,533.
I am hearing that it is still another very close race between our good Democratic Governor Chris Gregoire and the scum land developer-GOP (big fight here about him calling himself GOP on the ballot and not Republican, to try to confuse dumb people)Dino Rossi. If people haven’t voted here yet, please get out asap and vote for Gregoire among other good candidates if you are moved to do so.
I can also report that my mother in law and brother in law voted in person today in Odgen, Utah early this morning, and were in and out in about 30 minutes–no problems.
I look forward to what everyone has to say from around the country here at the Lake today!