Reacting to polling place problems - There are always problems.

[MineralMan]

Today, as in all elections, some polling places will have problems with equipment issues, shortages of voting materials, and other issues that slow down voting or cause delays.

This happens every year, in every election. Just because some problem is reported at some polling place somewhere does not necessarily mean that there is cheating or other misbehavior going on. It most often just means that there is a problem in that place.

It's not reason for panic, quite frankly. Typically, such process-related issues get resolved within an hour or two and voting proceeds as normal after that. The fix, however, never seems to get reported in the news or on DU.

Patience is needed.

[Hoyt]

1. +1. Where there are problems paper ballots are an alternative. The two counties

in Georgia where systems are down can always allow voters to complete ballots like the paper absentee ballots. The ballots in Georgia aren’t that long.

[MineralMan]

2. Yes. It might take a little longer to count those, but

that's not really an issue. I'm glad to hear that those counties have paper ballots available for voters.

[lagomorph777]

5. I heard that the Georgia problem is only the check-in process, not the voting machines.

They switched over to using paper books with voter names, instead of electronic tablets, for check-in.

So less of a big deal than was first reported here.

[Hoyt]

6. Perfect. Thanks.

[barbtries]

3. and then there's the ratfucking.

Link to tweet

[MineralMan]

4. Yes, of course there is.

Most people ignore such things and vote anyhow. This year, so many people voted early that the impact of such stuff will be far less than it might be.

[barbtries]

9. i'm counting on it.

just from the PTSD not so confident as i was in 2016, but i do feel good about where this election is headed.

[SharonClark]

7. The counting machine where I'm poll watching

went down for 30 minutes but ballots were collected and fed into the machine after it was fixed.

The problem was an accumulation of paper dust on the optical reader. Easy fix.

[MineralMan]

8. Things like that are typical and pretty common.

No harm done. The machine got fixed and the ballots got counted.

[gristy]

10. Agreed

It's a big country, with maybe 100,000 polling places up and running today. Get a problem at just one of them, and twitter and DU will make sure that everyone's heard about it and can worry about it.

[treestar]

11. The propensity to oanic

For some people is all too real.

[MineralMan]

13. Yes. That's why it's important to post factual information.

That is not to say that there won't be some isolated incidents out there today. There may well be. But, they will be isolated and have only minor impacts on the outcome of today's voting.

I would encourage people to drive by their jurisdiction's polling place sometime today. If they do, they'll see than nothing untoward is going on in 99.99% of all jurisdictions. Just people going to the polls to vote and successfully voting.

[radius777]

12. Voting problems more negatively impact

densely populated areas, which tend to be heavily Dem.

Rural areas that have an issue aren't as impacted because they have smaller populations and can operate manually.

Large urban counties that have an issue can't do that as easily, and you get long lines and chaos - and suppression of Dem vote.

[Just_Vote_Dem]

14. In 2018 I showed up the first day of early voting

right when they opened, and there was a snafu that took about an hour to resolve. Only one person left, and that person was given a phone number to call, can't remember exactly why, could be that their filled-out ballot couldn't be tabulated at the time. I resolved at that time to always go on the second day rather than the first , lol. Now I do mail-in because of Covid.

[MineralMan]

15. I have always voted in my precinct at about 10 AM on election day.

That gave them time to sort out any issues and I usually found short lines, if any line at all. This year, of course, due to COVID-19, I voted early and dropped my ballot off at an official drop-off location.

[apnu]

16. Thanks MineralMan, your sage words are always welcome.

I concur, this isn't our first rodeo, problems and delays are common. Be calm, be patient. Gather facts from reputable sources, deliberate before reacting. In short, think before you click/like/forward/post stuff.