• cabbage@piefed.social
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    24
    ·
    9 days ago

    A bit worrying to hear so many stories of lines for early voting. I get how it’s also a good sign, but… It shouldn’t really be necessary to wait in line? If it’s bad already, won’t election day be a disaster? Are lines equally long in Republican areas?

    • moakley@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      34
      ·
      9 days ago

      A few years back the GOP closed a bunch of polling places in blue areas. It’s flagrant voter suppression.

    • BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      18
      ·
      9 days ago

      My wife waited an hour and a friend of hers waited 2 hours to vote. She also heard several stories of people passing out in line. It’s disgraceful. This is absolutely driving down participation. I’m sure the state GOP would even say if you can’t stand in a line for over an hour while it’s sunny and high 80s maybe you just don’t care about voting that much.

      • CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        9
        ·
        9 days ago

        Ugh. I’m always so thankful that Colorado has had mail-in voting for so long.

        It should be mandated at the Federal level that every state is this free. A voting system that works to actively discourage voting is a disgrace to this nation.

    • usernamesAreTricky@lemmy.mlOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      10
      arrow-down
      1
      ·
      9 days ago

      There are usually fewer early voting locations compared to election day so with record turnout, the lines have been longer

      Republican areas tend to be less densely populated, so the number of people to voting locations ratio makes lines there generally less long

    • COASTER1921@lemmy.ml
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      2
      ·
      9 days ago

      Personally I’ve never had any issues with lines despite living in a heavily blue district. It’s worth noting that as election day gets closer more early voting locations open, voting the first day of early voting sounds like a bad idea in terms of lines. Obviously this isn’t going to be the case for every district, but when only a handful of places are open for the first day of early voting it’s inevitable they’ll be packed.

      I personally have bigger issues with the fact that the majority of polling locations are churches and that political signage is allowed outside of them.