Just finished early voting here in Illinois. Some observations:
Line wasn’t long at all, about 8 people in front of me, but it took me about 45 minutes (I’ll get to that in a minute.)
Half the crowd at the booths and in the library near the voting area were seniors like myself and the other half were Hispanics.
Although there were only 8 people in front of me, it took so long because none of them spoke English. They had a coordinator of some sort with them, who was arguing with the election official and translating. They were all “same day registering voting” and it seemed like none had any form of ID with a current address, but the discussions went on and on, it seemed like one big hot mess with the Latino voters.
Eventually (after 35-45 minutes) they opened up another desk (they were in the process of setting up that desk shortly after I arrived) where you could walk up to IF you were registered. I was the 1st person to that desk, and quickly went on to vote.
When I came out, they were still bickering with the Latino women (all were middle aged women, the kind you would see making tortilla’s over a brick oven not your “sassy Latino” types (if that makes any sense without sounding like a racist)). The line of seniors was moving quickly (seems we were all registered).
I made a couple of other observations:
First, I found it surprising that a US Citizen could not speak a lick of English at all. I swear these women who I were listening to could not understand ANYTHING the election volunteer was trying to tell them, and they could explain NOTHING to him either. They needed their “coordinator” with them.
Second, they were all part of a group that was with this “coordinator”
Third, it was 54 degrees and they all were wearing heavy winter coats. Now, this may seem odd, but here in Chicago only visitors wear a heavy coat until it is 20 degrees. It was in the 30’s this morning (it was 2pm when I finally left the library), so my thought was a) they are out of towners or b) they had been travelling since this morning.
Fourth, as I got in the car, I wondered, if they had no ID to vote, was the idea either to somehow weasel them to vote, or was there a coordinated effort to slow down the line to discourage voting? Or both?
Anyways, that’s my poll report.
I early voted last Saturday here in SE NM. As I left, there was a woman just inside the building door (not the door to the large room where voting was actually held) with a yellow sample ballot explaining to several older women in Spanish how to mark it. I didn’t like it but wasn’t too concerned because they have to provide information that they are registered before they get a ballot (no same day registration, information requested includes checking address and birth date). Also, since 1912 the NM Constitution requires that ballots and all voter information be in both English and Spanish.