Is the United States ready to vote next year?

[journalist3072]

Poll question: Is the United States ready to vote next year?

So, do you honestly think we are ready to cast votes next year?

I'm very concerned about both the primaries and general next year, and whether or not we've done enough to ensure that legitimate voters will have their votes counted next year.

What, if anything, is being done to ensure that enough voting machines are placed in minority neighborhoods, so that we don't have to see another article like this from the Washington Post:

Several Factors Contributed to 'Lost' Voters in Ohio

By Michael Powell and Peter Slevin

COLUMBUS, Ohio -- Tanya Thivener's is a tale of two voting precincts in Franklin County. In her city neighborhood, which is vastly Democratic and majority black, the 38-year-old mortgage broker found a line snaking out of the precinct door.

She stood in line for four hours -- one hour in the rain -- and watched dozens of potential voters mutter in disgust and walk away without casting a ballot. Afterward, Thivener hopped in her car and drove to her mother's house, in the vastly Republican and majority white suburb of Harrisburg. How long, she asked, did it take her to vote?

Fifteen minutes, her mother replied.

"It was . . . poor planning," Thivener said. "County officials knew they had this huge increase in registrations, and yet there weren't enough machines in the city. You really hope this wasn't intentional."

Since 2000, my concern has always been that we don't do enough to educate voters on their rights in the voting booth. If a legitimate voter has a problem on election day and their right to vote is being questioned by some "vote challenger," will that person know who to call to get help? Will they remain at their polling site until they are allowed to vote?

Will people stay around long enough to vote, if there aren't enough voting machines at their polling site and there is an extraordinarily long line?

Where is the DNC Voting Rights Institute in all of this? It seems to me that they should be doing the ground-work now, to help educate voters on their rights.

[hobbit709]

1. Americans are ready to vote

The question is will the count be legit.

[Rex]

2. Depends, will America trust the presidential election

ever again? I would say no.

[Mendocino]

3. Living in Ohio

I live in a "red burb" and have never had any trouble voting, at most a five minute wait. I have friends who live in urban area (Toledo) and it usually takes them at least a half hour and up to one and a half hours in presidential years.