I got chills. Thanks for posting this!!!

I voted a week ago, what the fuck is wrong with these people?

(still, I'll give them credit for waiting in line to vote)

In mid afternoon, it was a 1.5 hr wait... People were chatty and friendly, plus there was a volunteer passing out TopPot donuts! And, I couldn't shake the protest chant from my head: "What does Democracy look like? THIS IS WHAT DEMOCRACY LOOKS LIKE!"

@ 3- if your ballot was lost (by you or your postal worker), this was your fate... but the tangibility of voting in person at a polling center is extremely satisfying. Worth the wait.

Like you've had your ballot for what - three weeks - and in that time you couldn't complete it and mail it. I used to think that compulsory voting was a wise, desirable requirement; but from what I see here, I'm dead wrong. It's not that hard, people. Leno's Jay-Walking segment accurately reflects much of America's cluelessness. Call it the Text-Factor.

Seriously...if the Post Office lost that many ballots...we have bigger issues in this country than I thought.

Rhett @ 6

Criticism without context.

Someone should have asked how many Diebold touchscreens were set up.

Big ballot, lots of confusing issues. Let's guess 5 minutes per voter. 20 voters per hour.

I'd guesstimate 400 people in that line (to just pick a number). You'd need 20 touchscreens to get that many people out within an hour.

Someone should also ask why KCE didn't wheel out more Diebold touchscreens. I'm guessing the election administration software makes you specify the number of machines when you create a new election database. That happens weeks in advance. So guess wrong and you're SOL.

Stupid Diebold.

Cheers, Jason

kitkatt @ 7

USPS loses ~1% of all third class mail. Lost. As in gone. Disappeared. Not UAA (undeliverable as addressed), which is returned to the sender.

One percent of 1,100,000 ballots issued is 11,000.

Some fraction of those are dedicated voters who will show up a poll site on election day.

Cheers, Jason

PS- That 1% also applies to returned ballots. People who tried to vote, but the ballots got lost. And you won't know, unless you call to verify receipt.

@9,

Or unless you look it up online, which I already did. My ballot was not lost. It wasn't lost in 2008 either.

Actually, those people who were waiting at the train station wanted to get out of town before that wave of runny shit from the GOP/TP swam over them and choked them to death.

Now we know why it's called "TP"... it's toilet paper for wiping up the mess that the GOP & TP have created -- and will go on creating until we blast them to Mars on a space shuttle.

Hey, stupid: ballots are not Third Class mail. They are stamped and delivered as First Class mail. Duh!

Yes, the vast majority of Americans are totally clueless. How else to explain the election results tonight?

Charles @ 12

First class, not third class. My bad. It was late.

1% lost still applies. It's worse for third class mail.

USPS is pretty close lipped about this kind of thing. I was able to figure it out by reading court documents. Their big customers sue over these kinds of things.