I voted yesterday... No Political statements just asking about the method you chose on casting your ballot.

[BrianL]

I just early voted for the first time after a friend texted me to say there was minimal wait at a location just down the street. I was able to get it done in about 5 minutes!

 

[OneOftheB's]

I voted early this morning, waited in line about 30 minutes. I waited much longer for 7DMT on Saturday morning, so no complaints.

 

[jlmarr]

Dropped off our "mail-in" ballots at the official drop box next to the nearest library branch. Was notified our ballots were received via text message a couple days later. I suppose we'll be notified when they're actually counted.

 

[JimMIA]

In the first five days, Miami-Dade County, FL has had just under 203,000 early votes cast -- a little over 40,000 per day.

I'm expecting higher numbers this weekend, which will be the first weekend early voting has been open. I wouldn't be surprised to see 50,000 a day on the weekend.

 

[Heigh-Ho]

We dropped off our ballots the other day, now the tracking begins!

 

[maxiesmom]

I voted by mail. Well, I didn't mail my ballot back in, it was dropped off at City Hall.

 

[Heigh-Ho]

Our county (Miami-Dade, FL) elections office has a good bit of info on their website, including wait times and number of votes cast for all 33 of our Early Voting sites.

We had 43,000+ votes cast yesterday, and most sites have NO wait time at all. Only about 5-6 have wait times, and the longest wait I saw was 45 minutes. The site where I dropped off yesterday has a 25 minute wait today.

So far in Miami-Dade County, more than 85,000 people voted early...on Monday and Tuesday alone. Today's numbers have not been posted yet.

In our first 3 days, Miami-Dade County, FL has had 120,982 early votes cast. That total includes mail ballots, either mailed in or dropped off.

In the first five days, Miami-Dade County, FL has had just under 203,000 early votes cast -- a little over 40,000 per day.

I'm expecting higher numbers this weekend, which will be the first weekend early voting has been open. I wouldn't be surprised to see 50,000 a day on the weekend.

Hi there! This might actually be better for a different thread all together. You like to update a lot for your area but this thread is about particular methods people are using not necessarily raw numbers posted a lot. You're not the only one to comment (don't want you to think I'm picking on you) but you seem to be the only one who is talking more about it. Might actually be a cool new thread for you to create for people to talk about the differences in numbers really, this year a lot of areas are experiencing really big jumps in mailed ballots

 

[Heigh-Ho]

Dropped off our "mail-in" ballots at the official drop box next to the nearest library branch. Was notified our ballots were received via text message a couple days later. I suppose we'll be notified when they're actually counted.

I just LOVE how places are really trying to add more drop boxes, libraries especially. Even in their limited capacities right now libraries are still places people in the community go to and depending on where you live they can be placed in good areas to give access to people who may not want to mail off their ballot or drop it off at a location (like election office or city hall like someone mentioned) that may not be near them.

 

[Heigh-Ho]

I've been voting in Ireland since I turned 18 and the American systems intrigue me. As far as I know, in Ireland we only have in person on the election day voting or absentee mail in voting. I have always done on the day in person voting and we don't have the huge lines at polling stations. We still have paper and pen, mark an X beside the candidates name and photo, and then put the piece of paper in the box.

Seeing all the different ways in America is really interesting

I love that we have the option here to advanced vote. Not everyone can realistically go in on election day (and I've made the mistake one time of doing it on election day and even as many polling locations available on that day it was still over 2 hours in line and I was late to work, yuck I'd like to avoid that), not everyone feels comfortable voting by mail. I think the states here that have more options the better!

 

[sk!mom]

For me, this is an election that no one sits out so I made dates with two people who I thought might need encouragement. One needed a ride so we went yesterday afternoon. We waited for 57 minutes and cast our ballots. I was up at 7 this morning to pick up the other. We stood in line for an hour and 20 minutes for her to vote and then had breakfast together.

Get a friend and go vote. The time passes quickly with someone to talk to While you wait.

In my state, mail in ballots are only allowed for those who meet the criteria. I do not. My city of 100,000 has one stand in line early voting location and one drive through location. Friends who have used the drive through have reported waits of at least 1.5 hours.

 

[sk!mom]

Hi there! This might actually be better for a different thread all together. You like to update a lot for your area but this thread is about particular methods people are using not necessarily raw numbers posted a lot. You're not the only one to comment (don't want you to think I'm picking on you) but you seem to be the only one who is talking more about it. Might actually be a cool new thread for you to create for people to talk about the differences in numbers really, this year a lot of areas are experiencing really big jumps in mailed ballots

Pet peeve for me is when someone responds to a thread and someone tells them that they did so incorrectly. This is a discussion board. Discussions naturally go in multiple directions and take twists and turns.

 

[Heigh-Ho]

Pet peeve for me is when someone responds to a thread and someone tells them that they did so incorrectly. This is a discussion board. Discussions naturally go in multiple directions and take twists and turns.

That's a fair statement though I didn't tell them they did something incorrect; I did make a suggestion (one that they can fully ignore if they want to).

A pet peeve of mine would be that when someone suggests a new thread that might be interesting is someone takes that and tells them this is a discussion board. We know this is a discussion board of course This thread has a few different directions already but mostly people discussing with each other and then going back to the method of how someone voted.

I'm okay if you don't like or agree with my suggestion but as it's a pet peeve of yours maybe you could have chosen not to do what peeves you and tell someone they did something incorrect and just let the discussion happen naturally in multiple directions taking the natural twist and turns it could have taken

I just figured if someone is so invested in raw numbers of their place maybe they could create entire thread which could be devoted to that and around the U.S. Then people could keep track over time without it becoming redundant since that's what the whole thread would be about. There was no disrespect meant in my comment to the other person so I'm sorry if they or anyone else took it that way

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

We got to finishing our mail-in ballots today. We would have dropped them off at the Election Office but there is a library location right where we were going to be and the Election Office was not so we just dropped it off at that library location.

According to the county they are just bursting at the seams on mail-in ballots so I'm not going to check my status until probably Thursday or later. I'll just stress myself out lol.

 

[JimMIA]

We got to finishing our mail-in ballots today. We would have dropped them off at the Election Office but there is a library location right where we were going to be and the Election Office was not so we just dropped it off at that library location.

According to the county they are just bursting at the seams on mail-in ballots so I'm not going to check my status until probably Thursday or later. I'll just stress myself out lol.

I have to admit that when I turned in our ballots, I was still stressed even though I'd seen them go in the drop-box. But two days later they were counted.

One problem, tho, is that different states have different rules for the actual counting part. Some states count right away, but don't report the results. Other states don't allow counting to start until the polls close on Election Day.

Florida counts right away, but we don't report. Our results won't start to trickle in until 8 PM Election night because part of the state is in the Central time zone.

 

[jrmasm]

I have to admit that when I turned in our ballots, I was still stressed even though I'd seen them go in the drop-box. But two days later they were counted.

One problem, tho, is that different states have different rules for the actual counting part. Some states count right away, but don't report the results. Other states don't allow counting to start until the polls close on Election Day.

Florida counts right away, but we don't report. Our results won't start to trickle in until 8 PM Election night because part of the state is in the Central time zone.

Sadly my state doesn’t start counting until 7:00am on Election Day. And it’s a battleground state state. Absurd!

 

[ncc1701]

DH & I have been voting by mail for several years. We usually take vacation during Primary/Municipal season so we decided just to sign up for mail voting for all elections . NJ made it easy to do mail in before Covid-19. This year one of the County drop off boxes is in our town so we put our ballots in there rather than a mailbox.

 

[bobbiwoz]

I voted yesterday, put the ballot in the official box!

 

[bcla]

I have to admit that when I turned in our ballots, I was still stressed even though I'd seen them go in the drop-box. But two days later they were counted.

One problem, tho, is that different states have different rules for the actual counting part. Some states count right away, but don't report the results. Other states don't allow counting to start until the polls close on Election Day.

Florida counts right away, but we don't report. Our results won't start to trickle in until 8 PM Election night because part of the state is in the Central time zone.

It depends really. Counting can be fast with the right equipment. It's all the stuff that comes before that's tedious, manual labor. Some of that can be sped up with machines, but in the end it's still human eyes and a human brain doing the final analysis. When that part of the process isn't allowed to start until election day, that's when it could take days depending on the demand.

 

[JimMIA]

It depends really. Counting can be fast with the right equipment. It's all the stuff that comes before that's tedious, manual labor. Some of that can be sped up with machines, but in the end it's still human eyes and a human brain doing the final analysis. When that part of the process isn't allowed to start until election day, that's when it could take days depending on the demand.

Right, and states that don't start counting until the polls close will have to scramble.

But we have to realize that election officials are bound by the law. They can't just make up their own rules. So if the state law says they can't count until the polls close, they have to abide by that.

"But...but...but...but, why didn't they change the state law to make this more streamlined???" Well, because nobody anticipated a pandemic in the middle of an election year!

The system they've had for years has worked, so nobody saw any need to change it. Many states have had minimal problems previously, and had no reason to think this year would be any different.

 

[Mackenzie Click-Mickelson]

I have to admit that when I turned in our ballots, I was still stressed even though I'd seen them go in the drop-box. But two days later they were counted.

One problem, tho, is that different states have different rules for the actual counting part. Some states count right away, but don't report the results. Other states don't allow counting to start until the polls close on Election Day.

Florida counts right away, but we don't report. Our results won't start to trickle in until 8 PM Election night because part of the state is in the Central time zone.

According to my state they can process them as they come in and they "may be counted prior to Election Day, but final tabulation shall not be completed until Election Day."

But the news story where I was reading the information from (where people were also talking about being anxious about their ballot not listed as processed 4 or 5 days later) said this "due to the manual labor that’s required to process the ballots, the election office is behind. We have teams of people doing data entry. Before we can do data entry, we have to tear off the privacy flap on each one of these envelopes. That is a manual, one by one process, Then it goes into data entry where it has to be looked up one at a time. To compare the signature and everything on the envelope.”

Since I normally vote in-person I hadn't realized this manual process honestly. Before August there's only been one other time I had voted by mail (I can look up my voting history) which was a school district ballot in which state law permits an all mail-in ballot only (meaning no voting in person) when it's a question-submitted elections and only that which IIRC that school district ballot was a bond question.