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Originally Posted by cal828
I agree about the long lines. Wonder how many folks just said eff it and went home. Probably too simple a solution, but why couldn't they send out a ballot on line that people could mark and take back and hand to them with their driver's license. Seems like that would have helped a little. There were electronic voting machines where I voted, but most people were just filling out the paper ballots because ironically it was faster than using the electronic voting machines. On second thought, Maybe it takes a special kind of paper for their ballot readers?
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A big part of it is the right to secret ballot. Here in NY, I learned yesterday, it's actually illegal to show other people your ballot- a lot of people were taking pictures and posting to Facebook, not knowing it's against the law to do so (The legal thinking is that your vote is your vote, and showing other people how you voted could be interpreted as an attempt to influence other people's votes). Standing in line, filling out a ballot, it would be impossible to keep your vote secret. I waited an hour at 8:30 AM at my place, and there was an issue with where they placed one of the lines of people because it was within sight of the booths where you filled out your ballot and that was violating the voters' right to privacy.
I do think that states where voters are voting on referendums could save time by mailing text of the referendums out to registered voters so that voters could decide what they are voting on before they get there. Or, if the lines are long, hand out the text to people standing in line. I've occasionally gotten to the booth to find out there's a referendum and then had to take the time to read the thing, all the while feeling terrible that I'm holding up the line.
Rachel Maddow ran a piece a month or so ago on how the California ballot was some ridiculous length- several pages- because of all the referendums on it.