I just voted in Wisconsin. Our community, a blue little city in a sea of red, has a school referendum. There's not a huge turnout tonight, but we're starting to implement some of Scott Walker's "voter fraud" measures.
2012 is gonna be a mess.
My rant follows.
We didn't have to show photo ID - yet. We did have to sign our names. The election workers had some extra validation to do.
There were a total of six election workers at my voting place, with one voting machine and 8 voting booths. (Most in my community do not trust the machine.) When I arrived, there were about 8 people in front of me - and NO ONE VOTING.
All of the booths were empty.
As I waited, a few more people showed up. Some people got to vote, after being asked questions, told what they needed to do for next year, and after the clerks passed sheets of paper back and forth to each other. The line got to upwards of a dozen. Still, there was never any more than two people voting at a time.
It took, on average, about a minute to clear each person through the preliminaries; I'd guess that's about twice as long as it used to take. And that's without the voter ID.
This will be a nightmare in 2012 if it does not improve. We've had huge lines in the past, now you'll have to be really determined to be a voter.
This is what the republicans want. They're making it hard to vote. They're settling in for a permanent majority by disenfranchising those with kids, who have to take care of families, who work for a living, who have to take mass transit to get to and from their polling places.
This is why we need to throw the rat bastards out. We need to Occupy our polling places, in Wisconsin, in Ohio, in Michigan... in the United States.