Because some lawyers found out that the ballot counting machines are easy to manipulate.
Now all have to be counted manually. Since this wasn't exactly the original plan there wasn't (and probably "isn't") enough staff.

From what I understand the States use different machines as there are no federal standard at all...

Quoting Lewis_Prothero:

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Now all have to be counted manually.

I find that funny because here everything is done manually since forever and we never had a single problem... Of course sometimes we have recount if the lead is very small, but usually the result don't change as all the voting process is highly controlled by observators from each political parties.

All across the country different types of voting machines are used. They have the same basic mechanics, of course, but it would be rediculously expensive to try and replace all voting machines to the same model.

For several elections, Florida has been the last to "check in" with another notable election being the race between George Bush and Al Gore that used a punch card ballot as an alternative method ("hanging chads incident"). While voting is done in early November and from that the electoral vote is derived for which we then know the winner of the election, the electoral college does not formally cast their votes until miid-December. So, technically, up until that date the members of the college have the right to change their minds. In cases like these with Florida, it means electoral votes are often not yet being decided (but as the election was won by more votes than Florida has available, it does not matter how things turn out in that state.

Even here we have waiting time (and one hour isn't that extreme), it depend of at what time you decide to go at the voting poll and I think the media show the worst hours most of the time as that give them something to talk about. A topo telling everything run smoothly isn't a good seller on TV but long line and angry people is.

Also don't forget that you must show an identification card when you are ready to vote and some people don't have one. Here it's easy as we show our provincial health insurance card as they are delivered by the province and recognize by the federal and provincial governements. So if you have nothing to show that can cause a huge delay in the process.

Oh that's easy. If anyone can make a simple thing difficult, it's us!  (Unfortunately )

But seriously, there are SO many factors, I can't break them all down, but I can narrow down to things like poor procedures, varying procedures per state, poorly qualified overseers, and concerns of voter fraud, biased overseers, and lack of proper voting-aid for the elderly.


But yea, as said above, it's often due to the time of day. If you have one machine accommodating per 25 people in line, at 3 minutes per person, that's still over an hour wait for the last guy.

Quoting TheMadMartian:

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Quoting Parsec:

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Why is that? Here in Australia you might go at the wrong time of day and wait a while to actually get into the polling booth but to actually vote (fill in the forms) only takes a few minutes at best. Even our senate forms which have stacks of nominees on it don't take that long.

It's the same here.  The problem comes when people don't look at the sample ballot that is mailed to them, and end up waiting until they are there to decide how they are going to vote.

You think with all the billions of dollars spent by each party, they might have used some of that money telling people how to vote 

I do not know about other states, but here in California, each county determines how to vote... which machine (if any), how they are counted, and how many polling places each will set up. The voting in California runs from 7 am to 8 pm. The only way to vote early is by mail, where by the end of October you must request a ballot by mail. You may either mail it back or drop it into a special ballot box at any polling place on the day of the election.

In our county, we used to use the punch card ballot (before that, in the mid 1960s, we used a X rubber stamp on a paper ballot), but for the last few elections, we use many sheets of paper with 1/4 inch by 1/2 inch ovals which must be filled in with a black ink pen. Until this election, the ballots did not carry candidates' names or proposition numbers or letters. Without a sample ballot to tell you which number oval to fill in, you could not vote. But even with the names and other details this election, we had more than five pages of ballots to fill out. Each oval takes at least 30 seconds to fill in. I voted at 1:30 pm and there were seven voting booths, but all were filled and two of the election workers were on lunch break. It took about five minutes to get my ballot, then another three minutes waiting for an empty booth. It was more than five minutes voting for the national candidates, the state candidates, the county and city candidates, the school board candidates, the state propositions, the county and city propositions, etc. Then I took my ballots to a machine that looked like a large copier and fed each of the three sheets (two sides for each) into the machine. I was voter 174 at my polling place. By the time I finished, there were six people waiting for the next empty booth. I imagine some states have fewer polling places, and perhaps some counties here in California have fewer places, too.

The Federal law is simple: if there are voters in line to vote when the polls close, the polling place must remain open for everyone in line at the time the polls close to get to vote.

If you are not registered and/or not listed in the printouts at your polling place, or you are at the incorrect polling place, you are allowed to fill out a provisional ballot.

We are pretty much like DJ, in that we get an invitation to vote through the door about 2 weeks before the poll, and that counts as one's ID. We still get crossed off a list by hand at the polling station though before using our high-tech pencil to mark the X on the ballot paper(s).......which are then counted by hand.

The daughters are both at university so they get postal votes which I sent on to them last week, I presume as students they would count as "absent voters"  in the States; likewise the military?

We've got one next week for Police & Crime Commissioners.........as you can imagine everyone is really excited about it

Cliff's post was interesting. Voting in CA looks like it's a lot of, er, fun    with so many ballots going on.

We sometimes get a couple, occasionally three at a time, but the names are on the papers so it doesn't take long, unless I add an extra box to the list - the one that gives the option "None of the above"