Seeing as we were talking about the good and bad sides to early voting last week, i thought i would look up how the early voting was going in this election. When i did, i was really surprised to find out that even in early voting lines, people have had waits of over 6 hours.
I would not have expected such a turnout to early voting, but i think that this just shows us how necessary it is for the election. Just think about what would happen if all these people waited until the day of the election to vote, while there have been voting problems in the past, this greatly increased interest suggests that the availability of voting time and locations needs to be increased. I'm sure that in having such long lines, many people are either disinclined to vote, or simply can't do it because they have other things to do. Because of this i think that they should either have the polls open for a longer period of time during the day, or just have more polls to go to. Something about the system needs to be changed because it is not capable of supporting this turnout. I know that the rules of the election give the candidates a deadline of election day to prove their point, but think that the availability of early voting is more of a positive effect rather than negative. While few people are likely to change their minds over the course of the last couple weeks, the early voting gives many a chance to vote when otherwise they could not have.
Regardless of the problems with lines and waiting, the turnout for the voting is encouraging. It really appears that people now are far more interested in the outcome of the election and are willing to go out of their way to have their vote counted. http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/11/02/early.voting/index.html
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