I hope all these pictures are from blue areas of the states.... (4.00 / 1)

...and not the more wingnutty ones!

REID: Voting against us was never part of our arrangement!
SPECTER: I am altering the deal! Pray I don't alter it any further!
REID: This deal keeps getting worse all the time!

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by: lord_mike @ Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 10:48:29 AM CST

strangely (0.00 / 0)

some of those fake Americans show up on camera... must be an artifact, like Galileo's observations of sunspots and Jovian moons. Not real! The Sun is perfect!

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by: sdedeo @ Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 11:33:08 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Poll Tax (4.00 / 4)

I got to go with Rachel Maddow on this one; these long lines to vote are a poll tax.  Not everyone can afford to take hours off in the middle of a work day.

We need to institute nation wide vote by mail and put an end to this lame system of ours.

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by: Mark Matson @ Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 10:56:42 AM CST

Or (4.00 / 1)

And/or get rid of this idiotic electoral college.  That way, there are no battleground states, and thus no surprises when higher-than-usual numbers of people show up to vote.

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by: Notorious P.A.T. @ Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 11:01:00 AM CST

[ Parent ]

And (0.00 / 0)

I choose the "and" side of and/or.

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by: Mark Matson @ Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 11:46:11 AM CST

[ Parent ]

Or have early voting (4.00 / 3)

or make election day a national holiday.  

Or, gasp, vote on Saturday.  Or have three days of voting across the first weekend in November.  After all, do you think the lines are worse during rush hour?  

There are lots of solutions available if anyone gave a damn.

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by: Valatan @ Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 11:05:26 AM CST

[ Parent ]

I used to think that way (4.00 / 2)

Until I moved to Oregon and started voting by mail.  Now I honestly don't get why we would do it any other way.  Everyone is trying to solve the problem inside the box when an outside the box solution has already been found.

Note that you don't even have to vote by mail, exactly, as there are many drop-off points to turn in the completed ballot, either early or on election day.  This was, in fact, the first time I actually mailed my mail in ballot; usually I just drop it off on election day.

Vote by mail helps both Democratic and Republican fears.  Because every ballot is sent directly to the registered voter, it is harder to disenfranchise voters through lines, intimidation, machine error or machine "error".  It is also pretty obvious that no one votes multiple times when the state sends the ballots to real addresses.

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by: Mark Matson @ Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 11:55:51 AM CST

[ Parent ]

This Is Quite True (4.00 / 1)

It's both a de facto poll tax, and therefore morally repugnent, even if it's not strictly unconstitutional according to the language of the anti-poll-tax amendment, and an equal protection violation.

Hopefully, the documentation of polling problems that's going on today will help set the tone for a truly comprehensive, and long-overdue reform of the entire system, so that other folks around the world won't laugh when they hear us talk about American democracy.

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 12:55:23 PM CST

[ Parent ]

Extend the ban on signage (0.00 / 0)

its clear from that first photo that the ban on campaign signage is not extensive enough. look at all that litter. if you are inline to vote and you don't know who the major candidates are you are a complete moron. all those nice trees ruined by that clutter. im sick of looking at this stuff.

I propose a ban on signage as follows: campaigns shall not put up any campaign material containing a candidate or party name within 300 feet of a tree, shrub, grass, children, residential door or window, ice cream shop, swimming pool, bike lane, flowers, or anything reasonably pretty as determined by a local pool of mothers.

this aught to limit things to concrete highways bordered by concrete walls, and strip malls, which are deserving of these visual abominations.

Michael Bloomberg, prince of corporate welfare

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by: Will @ Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 11:19:21 AM CST

From Rock The Vote--Early Morning Lines At Penn State (4.00 / 1)

"You know what they say -- those of us who fail history... doomed to repeat it in summer school." -- Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 6, Episode 3

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by: Paul Rosenberg @ Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 13:07:12 PM CST

Voted (0.00 / 0)

Voted in downtown Brooklyn this morning. It's never taken me more than 5 minutes to vote.  Today it took an hour and forty minutes.

Youth To Power: How Today's Young Voters Are Building Tomorrow's Progressive Majority

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by: Michael Connery @ Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 13:15:10 PM CST

No line at my precinct in NC (4.00 / 1)

Poll workers told me early this am there was a line wrapped around the building but at around 10 am, when I went, there was no line, whatsoever.

It has  been raining all day here in NC .Some are speculating that if the weather dampens turnout today, it will work in our favor since we had so many more Dems vote during early primary. Supposedly, Obama was ahead after early voting by 250,000 votes in NC.

I went by two of our Obama HQs today, both are overflowing with volunteers!  

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by: NCDemAmy @ Tue Nov 04, 2008 at 13:34:59 PM CST