For decades, I always voted absentee (being in the military and overseas).
In 2012....I was physically in Virginia and decided to go and vote. My station opened at 7AM and I was there at 6:45. The line? There were near 500 people in front of me. I stood in line for almost 60 minutes. Folks were friendly and it wasn’t a bad weather day. But for a lot of folks....they don’t have time to stand around and play this game.
My brother lives in a small rural area of Ala and they open up at 7AM and there’s rarely more than twelve people there. He walks in....votes, and goes onto work.
We got into a discussion one day....over past relatives in Alabama and how the old method of voting was done at the county seat (in the mid-1800s) and you had to ride a horse or mule for four hours to reach there for the vote. There’d typically be whiskey before and after voting, and a long ride home after the event. If you posed this scenario today, of an all-day event, and eight hours on horseback for the whole day....95-percent of people wouldn’t vote.
I have voted almost every election by mail, because of the military.
When I was able to vote in person for a few years, I never saw any kind of line at the polling place.
The last time I registered to vote, I got an email from the county clerk telling me that I was ineligible to vote by mail. I had apparently checked the wrong block on the registration form. So when I emailed back to the clerk to correct the information, she wrote back “Thank you for your service!”
It is a big weakness in our system that we cannot easily verify people who do not physically show up. Maybe a fingerprint or something? I don’t know. Signatures are not secure because they can be faked.