Poli-Sci: Your VOTE! 2020 Experience

With early voting well underway in many states up to the 2020 election on November 3, I'm curious to learn what your environment was like.

No matter what your position, you should get out and vote for the candidates of your choice in your district. There are also many other down ballot races, as well as local and state matters like Constitutional issues to consider.

If you voted this year, what was your experience like?

We voted today here in Florida. Early voting has been underway for a couple days. We went to a specified early voting location around 1000AM here in Hillsborough County FL. Lines were short; we waited about 5 minutes. I showed my ID, then electronically signed the little tablet they had. I proceeded to a booth and used the pen they gave out to mark my ballot, then walked to the scanner and inserted both sheets in. We were done in about 10 minutes.

Voted today in Eastern NC, waited in line about 30 minutes, roughly the same amount of time I waited last time on election day. Took about 6 to 8 minutes to fill in all the right bubbles. They had drive up voting going as well for those that needed it. Everything seemed like a normal election day at the poll other than them providing everyone their own pen that they took with them vice leaving it in the booth. There was a sanitizer squad running around wiping everything down between each use of the booths as well.

We voted last Friday, the second day of early voting. The whole thing took roughly an hour. The Board of Elections obtained the use of a former K-Mart store that is unoccupied.

Line began outside and moved inside within ten minutes or so. Then a fairly long line inside that took about 20 minutes or so. We were checked in on a laptop and escorted to voting machines. Upon completion, our ballot was inserted into a machine that confirmed and stored the results.

They were well prepared inside the facility with hand sanitizer, gloves for those who wanted them, pens which would be kept by each voter after signing in, and a q-tip to push the selections on the screen.

For some reason, the "D"'s didn't work on my machine. Go figure.

New machines. Instead of just touch and enter, it printed it on a ballot which was then taken over to a central box, scanned, and deposited.

It was so great I voted early and often!:cool:

My wife and I voted absentee again this year because I'll be in Colorado elk hunting (harvesting) again and she will be cooking for hunters during third rifle season.
Requested ballots for myself and the BAD part of my user name, filled them out and took them to our county drop box.
Went to the drop box on a Sunday and waited..... well no I didn't. There was no one in sight.
I refused to let the USPS have them because it took them a month (yes) to deliver correspondence to the IRS that was sent priority, certified . Since it seemed to be lost (they had no idea where it was for most of the month) I ended up resending the material by UPS and it was there in two days.
I asked the post office for a refund on the postage. Well, you know how that went.
Am I the only one that thinks that the USPS won't/can't handle millions of ballots coming at them all at once?

4 adults received early ballots in the mail here. I have completed mine, and dropped it at the post office because I expect them to do their jobs, much as i do mine.

Certainly was more convenient than finding one of the drop boxes in our county (larger than Rhode Island) to put it in.

SWMBO has opened hers. Neither offspring has managed to do so yet.

SWMBO and I dropped our early ballots for the primaries at the polling station in our area back in the summer.

In no case has it been a problem. I hated standing in line to vote the last time I did. It was two hours just to get in the door.

Voting was smooth and streamlined. If everything government did ran like my voting location, we would be doing really well.

The line was out the door but moved quick enough. I broke my mask while adjusting it so I had to hold it up while I voted.

While I was waiting in line I saw a dude who looked so much like Biden that he could have passed for a double. Maybe I should have checked the silver alerts out of Delaware.


While I’m not a huge fan of early voting, it was an overall good experience.

CT allows absentee for anyone this year, because of COVID. I dropped my ballot in the dropbox in front of the town hall, but had to deliver my Dad’s ballot personally to the town clerk in order sign the outer envelope and present ID as designated deliverer. ID wasn’t asked for.

At my Dad’s age, his signature can be a scrawl, but CT is not doing a signature comparison of the inner envelope with anything they have on file. They’re just checking for “is it signed”, apparently. That was the only concern about his ballot being rejected. The town website shows both our ballots as having been received, but I don’t know how to confirm that they’ve been counted after 11/03.

I'm just here for snarky ass comments about mail in voting and voter fraud...

We voted absentee. Filled out the ballot with all Republicans. We didn't vote for Dems running unopposed. I took them to the drop box in front of the County Board of Elections. There was a line for early voting with a deputy standing by because voters had been unruly earlier. I bypassed the line, dropped them in the box and left.

I decided to deliver them in person rather than trust USPS.

We started voting absentee a few years ago so we could do research before voting. I always hated it when there was a surprise on the ballot that I didn't know anything about.