acroyear | The ScienceBloggers report in. (Reply)

Yes, I voted, and got the sticker saying so affixed to the lapel of my trenchcoat, totally ruining my cyberpunk cred.

Uncertain Principles: Stop Hitting Refresh!:

There aren't any results yet. Turn off the computer.

Go vote. Already voted? Watch some silly videos. Eat a sandwich. Do some freakin' thing. Just stop reloading FiveThirtyEight and Talking Points Memo, already.

Your incessant reloading is slowing my reloads, dammit.

Dispatches from the Culture Wars: Rachel Maddow on Long Voting Lines:

Rachel Maddow had an excellent riff on her show this weekend about long lines to vote and the fact that this is, in essence, a poll tax. She mentions the fact that a study in Ohio in 2004 found that as many as 129,000 people ended up not voting because they couldn't wait as long as it took to vote. Some people simply can't give up several hours to stand in line, while others can't do so physically. That's enough to potentially swing an election.

Something needs to be done about this. Doing what many other countries do and making election day a national holiday would be a good start.

With one exception: when it is a holiday, more people will just stay home. (or to make matters worse, it just turns into a pre-Christmas shopping sale day by all the retailers, thus taking a large demographic out of the election anyways.) Hard enough to find a sitter for the kids as it is in those areas (like VA) that give them the day off. Dragging the kids along to a polling place is a bit much...unless they get smart and set up mini-daycare centers for the hour that the parents are in line.

In fact, if each of them had a TV set showing the America Schoolhouse Rock dvd, that would be awesome. Fun for all ages, and appropriate too!