Hillary Clinton is Done: part 4

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bonzombiekitty said:
There's no set limit. States have different rules and often it can be up to the individual locality. In Philadelphia, we are broken into 66 wards, each ward is broken up into between 10 and 50 divisions. Each division has its own polling "place". One physical polling location can host more than one division, but will have separate machines for each division.

Philadelphia has roughly 1,000,000 registered voters. I did some back of the napkin calculations on some very conservative numbers and came to about 450 people per division (and of course not all of them will vote). But I think my numbers were way too conservative based on personal experience.

In other areas of the country there are thousands of people per location. It's, frankly, nuts. The idea that people have to stand in line for HOURS is just mind boggling.
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Thanks. I think (but am happy to be corrected) that here the position of polling stations is determined by an independent body, so the incumbent party can't close stations in areas they think it would be helpful to do so.
 
gypsyjackson said:
Thanks. I think (but am happy to be corrected) that here the position of polling stations is determined by an independent body, so the incumbent party can't close stations in areas they think it would be helpful to do so.
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Also the boundaries commission is independent so as to avoid the kind of Gerrymandering which has made the House of Representatives more or less impermeable to the will of the people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_States
 
bonzombiekitty said:
Yeah, it's weird to me too. When I vote, I never have to wait more than a couple minutes in line. But I usually get home from work a little earlier than most people so I often vote in a lull as everyone is commuting home - and in Philadelphia, most people live within a short walk to their polling location. My polling place is two blocks away.

At least it's not hours of waiting like some places. It astounds and angers me that it happens, but it does.

ETA: Friends just posted a picture of our polling station, there's at least 50 people in line. Dunno how quickly it's moving. Other reports from random friends in the city indicate that lines are longer than in 2012 and 2008.
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I have fond memories of living and voting in Pennsylvania. I lived on the same block as my polling place, so would walk down, walk right in, and vote on election day with never a bit of a wait.

Now, I'm in Georgia. We have early voting, restricted to one place in my county, only open Mon-Friday from 8am to 6pm. I had to drive 10 miles and wait in a 45 minute line for early voting. The week before election day, they open up one or 2 more polling places, from 8am to 7pm (I think), then on election day polls are 7am to 7pm. The single time I voted in a Presidential election on election day, I had to wait well over an hour in line. It really does seem like a third world country when one compares the differences.
 
The Don said:
Also the boundaries commission is independent so as to avoid the kind of Gerrymandering which has made the House of Representatives more or less impermeable to the will of the people.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerrymandering_in_the_United_States
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Thanks to the excellent More or Less radio show, I found out it should properly be pronounced with a hard G, as that's how the original politician's name was pronounced. However, it sounds weird like that.
 
The Big Dog said:
Collusion between the so-called unbiased media and one of the main subjects of their reporting?

wow.
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Did you see where the RNC confirmed it was a normal practice for interviewers to reach out to the other side to solicit questions?
Sean Spicer, the Republican National Committee’s communications director, suggested on Monday that some networks do also reach out to the party to ask for questions ahead of interviews.

“Sometimes, yeah. It depends,” Spicer told “Kilmeade and Friends” host Brian Kilmeade, when asked if networks ever pepper him for questions to ask during interviews.

“There will be times where a host will reach out and say ‘I’m doing an interview with so-and-so, is there anything that you guys know of, what are five questions you would ask.'
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http://dailycaller.com/2016/11/06/w...for-questions-for-interviews-with-trump-cruz/
 
wareyin said:
I have fond memories of living and voting in Pennsylvania. I lived on the same block as my polling place, so would walk down, walk right in, and vote on election day with never a bit of a wait.
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Normally this is the case. Seems different this year. I see a few people in different parts of the city posting about waiting in line for 40+ minutes. And the last I heard the line for my polling location was about 3 blocks long. Nobody is complaining about the wait though, they all seem excited so far.
 
bonzombiekitty said:
Normally this is the case. Seems different this year. I see a few people in different parts of the city posting about waiting in line for 40+ minutes. And the last I heard the line for my polling location was about 3 blocks long. Nobody is complaining about the wait though, they all seem excited so far.
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If literally everyone assigned to my local polling station turned up simultaneously I'm not sure that the queue would get that long.

I've cast ballots in a small town in the North East of England, in an "up and coming" part of South East London, an affluent Bristol suburb and now a Welsh village and the longest queue I can remember was about ten people. It seems that there is a shortage of polling stations in parts of the US, and in the UK.

A picture in this article shows a "huge" queue at a Hackney polling station.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/23/referendum-day-queues-polling-stations
 
bonzombiekitty said:
Normally this is the case. Seems different this year. I see a few people in different parts of the city posting about waiting in line for 40+ minutes. And the last I heard the line for my polling location was about 3 blocks long. Nobody is complaining about the wait though, they all seem excited so far.
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I think in 30 or so years of voting the longest I've ever waited in line to vote was 10 minutes - maybe Americans should consider setting up more polling stations if your waits are that long.
 
Border Reiver said:
I think in 30 or so years of voting the longest I've ever waited in line to vote was 10 minutes - maybe Americans should consider setting up more polling stations if your waits are that long.
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I think that's the GOP's point, to get long lines in areas where there's a large minority vote and so suppress turnout. In GOP voting areas there will be proportionally far more polling stations with longer opening hours, justified by *reasons*
 
Border Reiver said:
I think in 30 or so years of voting the longest I've ever waited in line to vote was 10 minutes - maybe Americans should consider setting up more polling stations if your waits are that long.
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These things are controlled by local governments, who stack the deck against minorities by shutting them down. They do it on purpose.

It would take all of maybe 2 hours for a bi-partisan group to come up with a fair voting methodology.

Problem is they'd have to work together, and they'd have to want to.
 
The Don said:
I think that's the GOP's point, to get long lines in areas where there's a large minority vote and so suppress turnout. In GOP voting areas there will be proportionally far more polling stations with longer opening hours, justified by *reasons*
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Maybe the federal government should consider handling this sort of thing, then.
 
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