Melissa and I woke up this morning ready to participate in the 2008 Presidential Election! With reports of 2-3 hour lines, we were ready for a long wait. Over the past couple of days, we’ve seen long lines for early voters and expected the same.
Luckily, that wasn’t the case.
We arrived at about 6:50AM. At 7:00AM they started letting folks in. And by 7:25AM, we each had our \”I VOTED\” stickers.
The whole process was well organized. First, we got into one of several lines, depending on our voting precinct. We signed in and received a paper receipt/tracking card that we then presented to a gal (at the end of another line) who scanned it to program a magnetic card (like a credit card or a hotel room card key). Then, we waited a few minutes to get to one of the 20 or so voting machines that were all lined up single file at the back of the room. There was a couple helper-bees floating around the voting machines providing instructions and answering questions. The machine worked well–simply insert the magnetic card and use the touch screen-based machine, using your fingers. Our ballot had about 20 screens worth of votes. The whole process, start to finish, was 35 minutes.