I live in California and when I went to vote there was no one in line.  Actually, I've never had to more than a few minutes to vote in any election.

I think the long lines are very much the exception.
For most people, in fact everyone I know, there really isn't a significant wait at all.  
But, short lines aren't news, so they cover the long ones....


So, while there are some horrific lines,  that's in a tiny fraction of most places.  

however, it is encouraging that so many people have gotten off the couch to vote this year.  Obama FTW.  

Antillian wrote on 11/04/08 at 13:33:51:


I am perplexed too. I have never waited any longer than 10 minutes in The Netherlands. Lines of two hours I am used to associate with first free elections in countries like Tadzjikistan.
At the other hand the procedure to participate in Dutch elections when living abroad is so complex that me living in Moengo effectively am prevented to vote.

I am really perplexed to see in the US news about these incredibly long waits - sometimes in excess of 3 or 4 hours. As someone coming from a tiny island and never having waited  more than 30 minutes to cast a vote in my life, I am stunned.

Yes I understand that the ballots in the US are incredibly long since you have to vote for federal, state and local officials as well as a host of random plebiscites. But surely the country with the greatest history of innovation in the world should be able to solve such logistical challenges.

Obama gave a speech on the steps of the Ohio Statehouse yesterday (Sunday, November 2) and Betty and I went down to see him.  It was quite inspiring, but never before did I realize that Obama is only about 1.5 inches tall.  To elect such a tiny man will truly be a historic first.

But seriously, the news said that there were about 60,000 people there.  We were quite lucky to have a clear line of sight, there were so many people holding up kids on their shoulders.  The weather was beautiful.

I feel good about tomorrow.  Fox and the Republicans have been trying to create the impression that the race is tightening, but you couldn't prove it by anything happening here in Ohio.  The Columbus Dispatch did a poll, printed on Sunday, showing that Obama is up by 6 points statewide.  The Dispatch reported today that people stood in line at the Franklin County early polling station, on West Broad Street, until midnight this morning just to vote.  The law says that if you're in line by 5:00 pm, they can't turn you away.  A very high proportion of these early voters are for Obama.

McCain can't win without Ohio.

P.S. Since I'm white and over 60, the Republicans think I'm a prime target for their hate literature.  We've been receiving dozens of their mailers that try to associate Obama with terrorism, anti-Americanism, and so on, and so forth.  Everything but what the real message is: he's black.  And it says right on the return address, "Ohio Republican Party."  It would be funny if it weren't so disgusting.

Biden was a terrible vice presidential choice tactically.  He secured the Irish Catholic Socialists among us, but I was already going to vote for Obama!

Biden was an excellent choice for a person to succeed as president, and probably the best choice of those whose last name wasn't Clinton.  Since having Hillary would have been suicidal to his campaign, I was pleased with Obama.  

Obama has been taking risks at every turn, and they all seem to work for him.  The 30 minute ad really was dangerous considering he was leading at the time and he knew he would be attacked for spending too much and for anything substantive he said.  He also risked alienating any voters whose favorite tv program had been interrupted.  Yet his ad was brilliantly on message with just the right tones.  

I voted for Bill Clinton, and I will be voting for Obama.  I think these will be the first two presidential candidates that I will have voted for and have won.  I'm beginning to feel pretty good about this whole election process.   

(Yes, I also voted for Gore, who won.  But let's not go there)

RE: Admittedly most of the U.S. Networks were guilty of some level of bias, but I must say FOX News took it to a whole new distasteful level. So much so that I would find it difficult to believe any news coming from that network, even so much as a weather report I would second guess.

Sometimes my girlfriend and I will stop by a Mcdonald's for coffee and a muffin in the morning.  McDonald's always has FOX News on the morning (which is frustrating).  But I found that when McCain was ahead in the polls, or very close to tied, they kept talking about how Americans were moving away from Obama (the muslim terrorist) and how the Obama campaign was a failure.  Then when Obama started taking some significant leads in the polls,  the story suddenly became "how reliable is polling?" and "does polling matter anyway?"  I had to laugh.  One "analyst" said "It doesn't matter who people like, it matters who they vote for."  

Basically, the data is very important when it says what you want, and suddenly becomes unreliable or insignificant when it doesn't. 
FOX news...there's an oxymoron for you.

TopNotch's point about the use of "socialist" etc. put me in mind of a poll result I came across recently, which indicated that apparently about a third of Americans don't know which of the two major US political parties is considered more liberal, and which more conservative.  Higher than the approximately one-fourth of Texans who think Obama is Muslim ...