...barely.
I left work yesterday at about 3:45 to vote. I picked Stacey and Julia up at our house, and we headed to our polling location located only 1/2 mile away at the middle school nearby. The line wasn't too long, so we immediately went inside and found different tables with different precinct numbers on them. Not entirely sure which precinct we were in (this is our first time voting since moving here), Stacey pulled out the voter registration card she had received in the mail so that we would know what table (and line) to get in.
Precinct 379. Uh-oh. There were no tables with this number on it. The card said the address for the 379 location was off of Mark Scheffel road! We were a bit confused, considering that this polling location is literally a stones-throw away from our house. We asked an attendant to be sure, and he told us that this location was not for precinct 379. I was sure that this was our location to vote, considering that I had looked it up only a few days before. Skyview Middle School...that's supposed to be our location but this card says were under another precinct...379.
We concluded that maybe it was like a school district, and proximity didn't necessarily matter. Growing up I went to Rampart, but the kids feet from our house on the other side of Dublin had to go all the way downtown to Palmer even though it was much farther away. They have to draw the line somewhere, so we thought we were probably right on the other side of the line. So, we hopped in the car and drove half-way to Kansas to our polling location.
We arrived to find the end of the line out the door. I went in to make sure there was a precinct 379 table at this location and that we were in the right place. Check. 379. Unfortunately, 379 was the table that everyone else had come for as well. There were 4 different precincts at this location, but they each had one table and 2 workers, despite the volume of voters. Later on I found out that 379 had a line like ours since 7 a.m. straight. You would think that they would have started another table for 379 to match the demand, but the 1 book per precinct of voters probably prohibited that. So, we got in line.
After a few minutes a voting judge came by and I asked him if he had any infomation on where the precinct lines were. It was more out of curiousity then anything. He took me over to a vague map on the wall. It had Powers, Woodmen, and Mark Scheffel on it, and that's as detailed as our location got on the map. Looking at it, I couldn't tell exactly where we lived, and it could very well be that we were just on the other side of the line somewhere in one of the many precincts in our neighborhood. Unfortunately, I couldn't find out if we were really in the 379 book until I got to the front of the line...since that's where everyone's names were registered.
So, we stood in line for an hour and half before finally getting to the front. We handed the lady our identification. She flipped back, then forward, then back again. She looked at the name on the i.d. again. We weren't in her book. We were sent over to the provisional table and after doing some research in the "voter bible" the guy told us we could cast provisional ballots here, but that our polling location was at Skyview Middle School, precinct 365, where we went the first time. His words when telling this to us were, "don't kill me, but"... I didn't kill him, but I did say, "I already know what you're going to say".
Long story short...the "genius" that sent us our voter registration card put the wrong information on it!
Meanwhile, Julia started having a meltdown since she had been dragged around for 2 hours. We left this voting location and listened to Julia scream bloody murder all the way home. We got home at about 6 p.m., and I dropped her and Stacey off. I raced back over to the middle school and found no one was there except a few people. I was in and out in 5 minutes (literally). I came home and put Julia to bed while Stacey went to the school and voted. In the end, we got to vote...but I'm still questioning whether or not it was really worth it.
If the clerk's office hadn't screwed up our information, I estimate we could have both voted in about 20 minutes (instead of 3 hours).