The Associated Press reports:
Georgia residents packed polling places as early voting started in earnest this week, braving lines as long as eight hours to cast ballots and forcing some voting sites to stay open deep into the night.Polls have been open in Georgia since Sept. 22, but dozens more opened this week as part of a statewide strategy to ease the crunch on Election Day. The advance voting sites will be open every day through Friday.
The new system has been popular: About 200,000 votes cast their ballots on Monday alone. They’re among 1.2 million people, more than 20 percent of the state’s 5.6 million registered voters, who have voted early so far.
Two thoughts come to mind:
1. If you’re strongly pro-democracy, this sounds good. Especially in the United States, many voters refuse to exercise their right normally, seemingly in the belief that no matter what they do, it won’t matter much. This year, it seems that more Americans than ever before (in absolute terms) are going to the voting boots.
2. The organization seems to suck big time. If you have to wait hours in order to vote, something is horribly wrong. America prides itself in being the best democracy on earth, but Americans have to wait outside, in the bitter cold, for hours in order to exercise their democratic right to vote. Strange that.
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I think that’s the idea behind early voting, though. Have more time to get more people through the system, so there are not as long lines on election day.
There are obviously still some problems, esp. if a voting place doesn’t have many machines, but it’s still something.