Voted!
My precinct in Evanston was horribly organized. I got to the polling site at about 5:45 am for a 6am opening and was ~20th in line. Doors didn’t open until about 6:20, then I didn’t vote until 7am because there was a problem with my precinct’s voting room. It made me pine for the quiet competence annually exhibited at the Bach School in Ann Arbor
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Room was too small and not well-organized for flow. I voted at a church near my apt that was handling 3 precincts. Precincts are geographically based (with some attempt at approximating population parity), but there has been a lot more condo development in my precinct than in the others, so there seemed to be more people (as well as more early voters, I guess). 2 precincts voted in my room, which was about 20 by 30 or so. There were about 6 paper ballot stands and about 6 touch-screen machines (which did not seem to be reliably up and running, because volunteers suggested waiting for paper ballot machines when there was a choice between the two options) and everything was cramped with people and tables and booths and machines. Once you voted you had to exit by the same door you entered and give the workers the ballot to feed into the machine right by the hornet's nest of waiting people, further clogging traffic.
About 12 people could be voting at any one time, but only about 8 were at most points. As I swear happens every year, the oldest, worst-sighted, and most unnecessarily meticulous man in the neighborhood was selected to read identification and find the voting sheet we had to sign. He paged through this enormous book seemingly a single page at a time and, when he found an individual's info sheet for us to sign, would some times check the preceding and succeeding sheets just to make sure.
I was about the 60th person in my 2-precinct room to vote but no doubt in the hundreds in terms of the whole polling site because the third precinct was up and running at 6:20, while our room had to wait for another 15 minutes.
Waiting in line, one woman who had lived in Oregon reminisced about voting by mail. Others noted that there were 1-2 hour lines in Evanston for early voting -- expectations are for 85% turnout in Chicago (Obama and his operation live there).
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I assure you that the myopic, humourless, obsessive compulsive person checking ID has been common to all elections and referendums in which I have participated too and not an American 'innovation'. ;) I cannot tell you how many times I have had to spell my name to someone holding my photo ID.
I cannot imagine using a machine to vote, but we only vote for one position at a time in this country - or once in a blue moon there might be a referendum combined with an election, but then there are two separate ballots. So we get a paper ballot with a list of names and party affiliations- and a pencil. That's it.
I wouldn't trust anything which does not leave a paper trail.
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