turnout reports, voting problems, and last minute dirty tricks

[Franzl]

So how terrible are the "voting problems" going to get today?

[Franzl]

So how terrible are the "voting problems" going to get today?

Horrendously terrible?

Is it actually going to be awful somewhere or have improvements been made anywhere so people don't have to wait 6 hours to vote?

[Franzl]

It really should not be difficult for a modern civilized nation to provide enough voting booths for people to exercise their democratic rights without too much fuss.

One of the parties has a strategic interest in making it as hard as possible to vote. It's not a matter of wanting to but not being able to set up a reasonable voting system.

[Franzl]

Hearing about 11 hour lines in past elections have just dumbfounded me. In Denmark about 85% of eligible voters vote in parlamentary elections. I myself have now voted in 6 parlamentary elections (held every 4 years as a general rule) and I have never ever dealt with line issues. We're talking an absolute maximum of 2-3 minutes of waiting in any of the elections I have participated in. It really should not be difficult for a modern civilized nation to provide enough voting booths for people to exercise their democratic rights without too much fuss.

Yeah, I've never really encountered much of a line either. But then again, the turnout in my precinct is usually 40%.

But you, and the Danish and we in Germany....etc., don't have partisan Republicans running elections designed to be as convenient as possible for their candidates.

[Franzl]

Yeah, here too. I have voted several times now in 2006, 2008 and 2009 and 2010 and as soon as I went in I was able to vote. I don't think that you have to wait 10 minutes or so even in bigger places like Vienna.

We had some problems in Hessen in the 2008 election, I believe, when we did an experiment with electronic voting in certain precincts.

The machines broke down and caused waits up to 45 minutes.

We then decided...because of that among broader safety concerns....to never do it again.