Since there were long lines at the start of early voting here in Fairfax County, Virginia, I was expecting the same on Election Day—which has never been the case for me since moving to Virginia eighteen years ago. But the whole process took maybe ten minutes. I was pleasantly surprised.
While I’m poking a bit of fun at the “Make a Plan to Vote” campaign, I’m fortunate to live in one of the more affluent communities in one of the most affluent counties in the country. It literally took longer to find the middle school where I was assigned to vote (and, oddly, was not where I voted in the March primary) than it did to wait for three people ahead of me in line to get a ballot, mark my ballot for the three races (US President, US Senate, US House) being contested, and read through the multiple ballot initiatives.
Fairfax County seems to do voting well, though. While I’m in a very white, very well-off small town as of last August, my old district was majority-minority, mostly Black and Hispanic, and the lines were just as short and the process just as seamless.
