Va should open up the in person absentee vote. To vote early you need an official excuse, addresses , phone numbers, ssn, date of birth etc. The excuse has to be approved. Crazy. All I wanted to do was vote. On voting day, all I would have had to produce would be my Dominion Power bill. We should be making it easier to vote, not harder.

I had no wait when I voted, I had two children with me and was reprimanded for allowing my 10 year old son to do the voting while I held my 10 month old daughter. He was just pressing the buttons for me. Another thing, I didn't feel the voting tables were very private. They should have been turned around so our backs were to the wall. The people behind me could see what I was doing.

I would like to know why Virginia allows 1 voting machine per 750 people, while in Maryland it's 1 per 250? Does Virginia value its residents' time less than Maryland does? I think it's likely that some idiot beancounter figured that if you average out numbers of people over the day, there should be no backup. However, in reality there will be way more people coming before and after work. At our precinct they only allocated 2 voting machines. They did offer paper ballots, but I can't stand them, and most others in the line with me felt the same way. After all of the hype before the election, and with the projected closeness of the presidential race, I would assume that voting officials would have known that there would be a lot of people coming to vote. So why have only 2 machines for an entire precinct??? Something definitely needs to be fixed!

People in Spotsylvania Co. waited six hours. We are lucky to even be afforded this right, & be glad that we don't have to dodge IEDs while doing it. My precinct is at Armstrong, & we had lines just like Aldrin above. However, the wait was minimal even when I was there during the final surge, & I was completely through in 20-30 min. max. My Father went during lunch-hour when roughly 1,000 people all showed up at once, with 500 people in line at any given time, yet the wait even then was no more than an hour (During the day there were lulls with very short lines). All final voters made it in by 7:00 PM, & our precinct of North Point was finished by 7:15 PM. This is all despite a record number of 5,400 registered voters. There were five computer stations setup at my location, as well as three tables consisting of four paper ballot stations each. Seriously, it was extremely well planned & coordinated, & I give immense credit to the Elections Officers, school custodians, & various other volunteers who made it a great experience (If anybody is interested in efficiency they should talk to the Chief for our precinct, because it all ran smoothly. The poll watchers I talked to found it to be a favorite location of theirs, & all got along well). Everyone in line chatted it up, & the sense of community was strong with all of us there. I wouldn't trade the experience for anything!

In some states the voting machines assigned to precincts were done by partisan election officials. As was the case in areas of Ohio, districts leaning towards one party with more registered voters received fewer voting machines than districts leaning towards the other party with fewer registered voters were assigned a larger number of voting machines. I my view those kinds of shenanigans are the real election fraud and integrity issues, not the alleged voters claiming to be someone they are not when casting their ballot that our State legislature claimed was hurting the integrity of the vote thus requiring voter ID legislation. Perpetrators of the ID laws got their comeuppance election day when a massive turnout of voters that understood the real intent of the voter ID measures to suppress voting came to cast their vote and stood in line as long as was necessary to keep their franchise to vote.
Maybe the State and County election boards should be co-chaired with both a Democrat and a Republican. Having that balance might keep partisans on both sides in check and eliminate such nonsense as voting machine apportioning to voting precincts.

I voted at the VDOT building in Fairfax. There were only 2 voting machines and I waited about 1.5 hours at 7:45 in the morning. I don't understand the allocation of machines, but it seemed like we were tremendously underserved. Virginia should have an early voting option to avoid these problems.

Look at Travis County. They allow early voting for 12 days starting 2 WEEKS before the election. Oh, and no "excuse" needed. You just go to one of 22 locations where they have polls set up (Oh and they have a MOBILE POLLING station) and vote.

If a similarly sized county in Texas can do that, why can't Fairfax County? Is there some state law prohibiting it?

http://www.traviscountyclerk.org/eclerk/Content.do?code=news.megasite

Well let's see, on election day I was able to use my smart phone to start my car, skype with my cousin in Sweden, do banking transactions, conduct business deals, read several news articles, make orders for personal goods and services, check flight status for visiting relatives and a host of other actions of importance to me in a matter of minutes while casting my vote in the election that morning seemingly took an inordinate amount of time. Anything wrong here folks?

Isn't Fairfax County Democratic Party General Counsel John Farrell making contradictory statements here?

First he says that he is opposed to a bipartisan commission being formed in Fairfax County to study ways to alleviate long voter lines because the Board of Supervisors has little influence over the Virginia Board of Elections. He then proceeds to list a series of actions that Fairfax County can take to alleviate long voter lines such as redrawing precincts, funds for replacing faulty touch screens with optical scan machines, increasing pay for election officers from $100 to $125 a day, and auditing of the mail-in absentee process.

According to Mr. Farrell, these things must be done immediately and not after being studied by a commission because commissions are "a way to get nothing done for an extended period of time," What does Mr. Farrell suggest? That Supervisor Foust redraw precinct maps with a laser pointer during a public hearing?

I look forward to Mr. Farrell opposing the use of all commissions of any nature whatsoever on the theory that "they get nothing done for an extended period of time." Lastly, does he seriously believe that increasing election officers' pay from $100 to $125 a day will make any difference?

Here are some things Fairfax county could have done to alleviate long lines:

Advertise the bonds and amendments better. My observation: some people took an extremely long time at the machines and clearly didn't know how they wanted to vote. I realize that the Dems and Reps handed out sample ballots--but it appeared to me that lots and lots of people had never even thought about how they wanted to vote on these issues. While waiting, I saw one woman look at the election officer in confusion and ask "What does this mean?" He told her that he could not advise her. I wanted to scream--"If you don't know, just skip it!" Also, she had a sample ballot in her hand--I guess she didn't look at it until she got in the booth, even though she had been waiting in line for some time.

My precinct encouraged people waiting in line to use the paper ballot if they didn't want to wait. My precinct had several tables with privacy screens--later I talked with a friend who said her precinct only had four spaces set up for this. Election chiefs should be encouraged to set up more spaces for paper ballots.