Can We Handle a Historic Voter Turn Out?

For the last few days I had been wondering why the Obama camp has been really pushing for people to go and participate in early voting, yesterday I went to do it myself, and now have some idea what they may be worried about. By percentage, this looks to be the largest turnout at the polls in 100 years, by sheer numbers, this looks like it could blow away any election in history. On the surface, this sounds fantastic that so many people would participate in the process, in practice, this could turn out to be a nightmare.

I’m going to assume two things, a) if you are reading this, you more than likely will, or have, voted, b) you value your time, and in some respects are a very “busy” person (perhaps not so busy if you are reading me.) How are you going to feel if you get to the polls to find a 2-4 hour wait in line? How do you think most people are going to react? How do you think the poll workers are going hold up under those conditions? What will these places look like at 5pm, after quiting time? In states that use more “modern” polling equipment, could people be held up even more by people not knowing how to use the equipment, holding up people even more?

All said, my experience of early voting was not horrible, but the whole process still took about 45 minutes though. I know in past presidential elections I’ve walked in, grabbed a ballot, voted, and was out of there in under 10 minutes. Yesterday there was already quite a line, and it looked to me that they also might  be using this process to train people as well, so perhaps it’s not as smooth as it will be on election day. The fact that I had to wait longer for this then on election day worried me some though.

Each year our ability to wait for anything shrinks and shrinks, and I’m worried that many people may be so frustrated about having to wait for any length of time, much less hours, they may simply walk away. In other cases I’m worried the numbers may overwhelm the workers, mistakes could occur which could lengthen the wait even further, or worse, cause errors. Finally, I worry some about cooping up two very polarized sets of people in a tense, frustrating, tedious line for potentially hours on end….

I’d like to thank the Obama camp for having some foresight, or paranoia, to point out this option to me. I also recomend, if you have the means, you take advantage of this as well.