Text messages from my friends and coworkers across the City indicate unusually long lines here too. For James, Shilpa, and myself, we have never once had to wait in line at our polling places. James and I have been here over a decade, and never had a line at our neighborhood polling places.
Mine is in somebody's garage down the street from me. It's tiny, and has about five, maybe six, voting hutches.
There was a line when I showed up this morning, and within only a minute or two the line had extended pretty markedly behind me.
Now while this does not look like a long line, it is for a polling place as tiny as this one. It took about an hour for me to get to the front of the line (I happily watched TV on my iPhone while waiting). With something like 40 local and state initiatives to vote on, in addition to candidates for offices, ballots take a while to mark up even with a cheat sheet.
When I reached the front of the line, the head volunteer was somewhat frantically making phone calls and counting heads. They were already running out of ballots. She reported to whomever she was speaking with that they only had 16 sets of ballots left, and well over 25 people waiting in line (She stopped counting at 25 knowing for sure they were going to run out of ballots soon.) Luckily, by the time I finished marking and submitting my ballot, an official minivan pulled up with what appeared to be boxes of ballots. But still, if the little local polling places were running out of ballots before work, how is the rest of the City and state faring? Will polling places be running low on ballots all day?
Or will some voters just be turned away again?
Not me! I voted!
I have never been truly excited about an election before. The community is planning a celebration/protest tonight in the Castro. See you there!
Prop 8 must fail!
1 comment:
i can't help thinking it's awesome that there has been such long lines all over... people taking a greater interest in public issues is always a good thing
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