Arlington County voters quickly check in at a polling spot inside the Clarendon United Methodist Church. Wait times dropped from an hour and a half to a few minutes at many Virginia polls. (Laura Olson/Tribune)
by Laura Olson
ARLINGTON, VA. -- A light rain that began in early afternoon coincided with a drop in lines at Virginia polling places.
An estimated 50 percent of voters had cast a ballot by 10 a.m., according to state election officials. That figures combines the 10 percent who participated in the in-person absentee balloting and another 30 to 40 percent at the polls this morning.
Wait times had disappeared by about 1:30 p.m. at a polling spot on the George Mason University campus as well.
Poll workers had to hustle until about 9 a.m., said Kaye Ann Helmich, precinct chief for Arlington County's precinct 40. Voters were already in line when volunteers arrived at 4:45 a.m.
Some waiting outside complained that the line was not moving as officials hurried to set up booths and move those in the beginning of the line through, but crowds dissipated after the initial rush.
Morning crowds did not surprise Arlington County Registrar Linda Lindberg. The county's voters tend to come out in the morning, and that was the case at precincts across the county, she said at an afternoon briefing.
Lindberg said she expects another rush after 5 p.m., as subway commuters return to the suburbs from their D.C. jobs.
The precinct is new this election, carved out of several surrounding voting districts, said Helmich, who has volunteered at her polling spot for about 12 years. Despite the new location, there were few voters in the wrong location, and the new electronic poll books helped to find the correct poll for those who were misinformed.
The most common problem throughout the state seems to be forces of nature. In a number of polling spots, paper ballots became wet after voters coming in from the rain placed their vote. The ballots were set aside to be dried, said state board of elections secretary Nancy Rodrigues.
Record turnout across the state showed in one Chesapeake, Va., polling location, which had 1,000 voters in line at one point. Another in Virginia Beach reached 500 voters waiting to cast a ballot.
A few accounts of voter suppression (including one claim of a Rush Limbaugh recording being played loudly outside a poll) are being investigated, according to election officials.
All in all, this year seems much smoother to Helmich, who said poll workers in her precinct "never caught up all day" during the 2004 election. Norma Johnson, precinct captain at another Arlington poll, agreed, saying that early voting seems to have kept daytime lines under control.
As Johnson prepared for the evening spike in turnout, it was unclear how many more voters could come out to polls.
"It changes from year to year," Johnson said. "But we've seen a lot already."
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Comments
I'm sorry, but it is not acceptable to make people stand outside in the elements (in this case, rain) for hours to cast a ballot in a federal election.
It is not appropriate to require 85 year olds to have a current driver's license in order to cast a ballot, as they apparently do in Indiana.
Federal elections need to be federalized.
In the Uniform Federal Election Reform Act of 2009, for example.
Uniform standards for eligibility and voter registration
Polling places that are accessible to all and where people won't be de facto disenfranchised by requiring them to stand in the rain for 5 hours.
East Podunk, Missississippi, will have to find some other ways to win elections for Republicans.
West Panhandle, Florida, will have to find some other way to keep "felons" whose skin color is not quite right, off the voter rolls.
If the states want to tag along and clean up their acts for the concurrent elections for dog catcher, coroner, so much the better!
Posted by: ornery | November 4, 2008 11:12 PM