Candice Miller cares not for making exercising the franchise easier

our already well-run system of elections

... our already well-run system of elections."

Those 6 hour lines — I saw first hand where I was working at my Voter Protection assignment — don't happen in the great state of Michigan?

We managed to get the wait down to 4 hours for people in wheelchairs, because many of the others were nice enough to help them. And building residents brought chairs out to help. And I managed to convince building management to allow the lines to wrap around inside the building, violating fire codes, so they didn't have to stand outside in the freezing cold. But it was still a grueling process.

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by: William Allen Simpson @ Wed Feb 13, 2013 at 23:39:03 PM UTC

Tell us more about this...

County and municipality? Has this happened at the same places in previous elections?

It would be nice to know how widespread this is, too. In Kalamazoo, our longest lines were in the student precinct at WMU. But as I remember they were "only" two hours long this past year.

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by: memiller @ Thu Feb 14, 2013 at 01:37:21 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Highland Park 2012

East Detroit 2008 wasn't quite as bad.

#1 People started lining up at the polls before 5 am. They really wanted to vote! So you start with a 2 hour backlog.

#2 In both 2008 and 2012, there simply wasn't enough space and resources. I hand-made extra ballot protection sleeves by stapling together manilla folders. I helped setup additional voting areas with cardboard dividers to supplement the few official standing-up plastic versions, so we could get 9-12 voting at the same time. I added seats to a couple of tables so that elderly could sit and vote -- one of those was a weight machine bench, that I started using for guys with bad knees and canes, just the right height for them to easily rest half-standing and get up again without assistance.

#3 In 2012, it was the pictured id verification system that was the bottleneck. The scanner didn't work reliably, which forced them to enter names and numbers by hand. Picture ID is really all about slowing down the process!

#4 In 2012, it was also a 4 page ballot (2 long forms). The machines don't handle those very well. Neither do the voters.

But many/most of the workers at my precinct(s) had been working there for years. They knew what they were doing. They just were completely swamped.

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by: William Allen Simpson @ Thu Feb 14, 2013 at 20:16:32 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

kudos.

This was a very informative post sir.

Great Lakes, Great Times.

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by: Michael McGuinness @ Thu Feb 14, 2013 at 20:45:28 PM UTC

[ Parent ]

We had that problem in Grand Rapids

The precinct where I worked was fine, but some had very long lines.

Great Lakes, Great Times, Great Scott

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by: ScottyUrb @ Thu Feb 14, 2013 at 02:40:09 AM UTC

[ Parent ]

Can't Believe

"I do not support the president's proposal to appoint yet another national commission to study solutions to the problem of long lines at polling places that seems to be confined to very few states," Miller said in a statement.

I honestly can't believe she'd say something so dumb.  Let's entertain the idea that it was a "very few states", a former Secretary of State should be outraged if anyone anywhere in the country has to struggle to vote.  And, let's be clear, there were MILLIONS of voters who had to weight in unreasonably long lines to vote, last November.  This should not be happening in a so-called First World nation.  This isn't a bug of the Republican Party; it's a feature.

Quite frankly, I don't really care what she has to say.  She's a second-rate member of Congress, and thank god she's largely out of Michigan, these days.

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by: MiddleGrandGuy @ Thu Feb 14, 2013 at 01:58:13 AM UTC

She is against it because Obama. (nt)

Great Lakes, Great Times, Great Scott

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by: ScottyUrb @ Thu Feb 14, 2013 at 02:41:06 AM UTC