After we left Tent City yesterday we drove by the Early Voting location to see what the lines were like on Sunday, compared to what they were on Saturday. I didn’t have my camera Saturday, but the lines were longer then from what I saw and from the updates I received from the shuttle drivers at Tent City. Yesterday, I had my camera…
David Patch reports:
Linda Howe, director of the Lucas County Board of Elections, said the wait to vote yesterday stretched out to more than two hours, with the last of those who were in line when the office closed at 5 p.m. not voting until about 7:15. Yet nobody seemed to be annoyed by the delay, she said.
“On Election Day, if they had to wait that long, a lot of people would have been upset about it,” Ms. Howe said.
The 1,278 ballots cast yesterday at the training center, Lucas County’s single location for early balloting at 2127 Jefferson, brought the early ballot total to 23,037, Ms. Howe said.
Early voting will continue there today, from 8:30 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. Election Day voting in Ohio will be from 6:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.
The elections board also issued 44,340 absentee ballots for mail-in voting, she said.
My oldest daughter voted in California on Saturday because she was going to be traveling out of town all of this week (Yes, she’s one of those honest voters who actually vote where they really live instead of where they think their vote will have the most impact), she waited over two and a half hours to vote in Santa Clara. In Atlanta over the weekend they were reporting a ten hour wait at least one early voting center.
The reality of why it’s taking so long is some of these Early Voting locations were not set up to serve large numbers of voters, in other words, there should have been either more machines or more Early Voting locations. There were over 290,000 registered voters in Lucas County, I was not able to easily find an updated total, but let’s say it’s 300,000 - that would mean over 230,000 remain some of which will vote today and the rest will vote at one of the hundreds of voting precincts on Election Day.
At the rate of 1,278 voting there in just one day with the office staying open, the average number of voters processed per hour was 160 voters. Even if the 490 some precincts in Lucas County can only handle 50 voters per hour, and every single registered voter in Lucas County decides to vote? Everyone will be able to vote within the time period that the polls will be open. Of course, no one expects the poll times to remain what they currently are. One part or another of Ohio will experience some type of a technical issue that will create an order for the polls to remain open in that part of the State. For that to not happen? It would surely be a miracle…
