Reply #108: I voted on the second day of early voting in very blue Orange County, North Carolina with no wait.

[yardwork]

Early voting in North Carolina started more than two weeks ago, and I walked into the early voting site on the second day. No wait, but there was a line for people registering to vote, and a long line outside the Obama tent, I think to buy campaign signs, etc.

I understand from others voting early that they had to wait in line perhaps twenty minutes or so on other days.

We have paper ballots with ovals next to the candidate's names. We fill in the ovals with a pen and put our ballots in optical scan machines. If you haven't filled out your ballot properly, the machine spits it back out. I heard that people witnessed this happening to people, who were given new ballots to fill out while the defective ones were destroyed in front of them.

Optical scan machines can still be messed with, since the scanning and count are electronic, but we've had very few problems with them. Other counties in NC have touch screen machines that have lost ballots, lost votes, etc.

We have a Democratic Secretary of State.