Un-American

Posted on 11/01/2008 at 8:12 am by Bob Cesca

You know what’s un-American? Faster lines at McDonald’s and Baja Fresh than at a polling place. There’s no excuse for making people wait in line to vote for upwards of ten hours. Ten hours! Seriously. Ten. Hour. Lines. In. Atlanta.

If we can land a go-cart on Mars, why can’t America — the greatest democracy in the world — manage efficient and reliable voting?

Paper ballots and pencils. More poll workers and private booths than are actually needed. That’s all. It’s not complicated. It’s not hard work. After all these years, we seriously can’t get this right?

This entry was posted in Elections and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.
  • dontpanic23

    Amen, Bob. I can’t believe my mother is having so much trouble voting and there must be many more who are unable to stand on their feet that long all over the country. They’ve had months to see this coming–there hasn’t been this much participation in an election in, hell, ever. There Is No Excuse.

  • cminri

    I had knee surgery last year and wouldnt be able to stand for hours. I’ll have to bring a camping chair with me.

  • CupcakeCult

    Absolutely ridiculous. How many people won’t be able to vote on Tuesday because they don’t have 5-12 hours to spend waiting in line??? If early voting has been this bad, Tuesday will be disasterous!

  • J M Ashby

    The answer to your question is very simple Bob, just look at history.Voting was fucked up in 2000 very badly, we all know that. But who took power? The bush republicans. Were the bush republicans about to lift a finger to fix the system which helped them get into office? No way in hell. So here we are 8 years later with the same system we had back then. Its as simple as that.

  • Groobiecat

    Bob, agreed, but it’s sooo much worse than long lines. J M is right, the system is broken, and the right has no need to “fix the system.” But us dumbass Dems are just as guilty–what have we done to fix it? Nada. This is the biggest threat, IMHO, to our victory on Tuesday.Check this out: http://www.stealbackyourvote.orgThis is Greg Palast and Bobby Kennedy, Jr.’s web site to send volunteers to the polls to protect people’s right to vote! They need money as much as Barack at this point, IMHO.For background on the the anti-democratic vote stealing machine, and the inside story on some of the players involved, check this out:http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3945.shtmlI don’t know that I believe all of it, but if only 50% of this is true, the outcome is far far from certain. This should be the sole focus, really–screw the polls. All the narratives have been spun. Preventing voter fraud should be the top priority!!

  • dontpanic23

    I’m with you, Ceu. I have arthritis (and other shit) and can’t stand for even a half hour without moderate pain, and 4 hours would have me lying on the ground. Eight is unthinkable. But I went Very Early to vote, anticipating a late frenzy, and I called first to see if there was a line. And I’m lucky to have been able to schedule it that way. Some aren’t so lucky.

  • http://livefreeordie08.wordpress.com LiveFreeOrDie08

    I wrote an email to Bob on this last night with an idea that we urge a grassroots effort to start LINE-AID. It would be an army of volunteers who spend their free time standing in line to help alleviate the stresses (physical and time) that are being felt at the polls. The idea is that folks just jump in line, when a senior citizen arrives he/she is paired with the volunteer that’s closest to the front of the line. When the volunteer approaches the front of the line, the senior trades places, and the volunteer starts again at the back. This could also work for folks who are pressed for time…though, understandably more difficult to implement than the basic decency exhibited in keeping seniors from having to stand in line all day.As I wrote the idea last night it dawned on me that it seems like there’s a simple way to minimize this problem, which is to just let seniors jump the line…like FastPass at Disney. If I were standing ahead of an elderly woman/man, I would give them my place in line. Who wouldn’t?If you can volunteer time at a polling place to help line-sit, please do!! Volunteers could wear white T-Shirts with the word VOTE on them, or maybe just wear zinc oxide on their nose to signal folks they’re a line sitter.We need every vote, people. Let’s do what we can, and then do more.

  • Poleezz

    The county clerk’s office is open today and voting is going strong here in S. Indiana. A friend of mine called to say she had to wait 45 minutes to vote. This may seem brief to some of you, but this county doesn’t have a very large population. Every country fried hick far and wide is showing up to vote.

  • emsique

    I live in Oregon. You will never hear about this type of ridiculous treatment of voters here. The reason is that we vote by mail. There are no lines, no hacked computers, no computer changing your vote, no voter harassment, no pollsters, no hanging chads, and voter turnout is very high. In fact nearly all the voting problems I have been reading about in this election are non existent in my state. You don’t miss school or work. You can vote while you have the kids. You can vote if you are bedridden. You can vote in really bad weather. You can vote in the nude if you want!I love my state for its election process. I remember going to the local school to cast my ballot and remember the feeling of satisfaction at doing my duty as a citizen. I can tell you that I have the same feeling when I put my ballot in the mail.

  • http://www.osborneink.com Matt Osborne

    One of the ironies about living in my part of the old confederacy is that we use optical-scan ballots. They’re practically idiot-proof and I never spend more than five minutes filling one out. Then it goes “zip” through a machine like one of those Scan-Tron things you used for multiple-choice tests in high school. And how did we wind up with this simple, effective voting system? Why, it was mandated by a federal judge more than 25 years ago in a landmark civil rights case. Oh, irony, is there anything you can’t do?

  • dontpanic23

    LFOD – that is a KILLER idea. If my daughter could get off work and not lose the house (doubtful), she would jump all over this with her husband (who now has 3 part time jobs–ugh). I have all the free time in the world but it is because of my health/mobility issues, but I could spend some off-and-on time doing it. (Dear Santa–a scooter please?). I will be going to my precinct on Tuesday with a couple of portable chairs and (even though I’ve already voted) do the switch places thing. I can maybe find a few other good souls to pass the word and do the same. You are a genius!

  • JustaGuess

    To be fair, there aren’t ten hour lines in all of GA’s districts!

  • Teaflax

    As a Swedish-American, it stuns me that this is at all difficult. Here in Sweden, there is rarely much of a line and the votes are counted and verified by midnight (and elections are held on a Sunday, when most people are off work). Yes, Sweden is smaller, but the logistics of voting should scale upward with the population just fine.You get three special envelopes with a u-shaped hole to show if they’re filled and a tear-off strip to facilitate vote-counting for local, state and national elections, and you put the preprinted paper slips of your preferred party in them. Unless you want to cross out or write in specific candidates, there is no pencil involved.It’s damned close to fool- and tamper-proof, effective and probably a whole lot cheaper than voting machines of any stripe.I’m flabbergasted that it’s so hard for the US to get this right, and believe me, the last 8 years would have been very, very different if it had been.