Sheer incompetence. This is no way to run elections.

Doesn't she need to win the 5500 by about 3050 to 2450? 3050 is less than 60% of 5500, not almost 67%. Still unlikely, but fwiw saying she needs "nearly two-thirds" to win really isn't very accurate. On an unrelated point, the polling place at Watershed High at 46th and 4th Avenue South was a long-line, poorly thought out voting site for significant stretches yesterday.

I was an Election Judge in Minneapolis. One of the biggest problems we had was a huge number of election day registrations. Over 500 of our 2700 votes were registered that day. We had to dedicate 3 and sometimes 5 of our 12 Election Judges just to registering people who could and should have registered by mail. Would have saved us and them a considerable amount of time. It takes about 5 minutes to have someone fill our the registration form and voting register. It takes 10 seconds if your pre-registered. Remember this next time you decide to wait till election day to register while your waiting in line. There were also quite a few people who showed us with just a piece of mail saying that's all they needed to register. Someone was putting our bad information. There was also a few people who said they registered by mail, but were not on the pre-registered list. Anyone checked in the dumpster behind ACORN? We could have had double the EJs and 4 times the number of booths (we had pressed tables and 30 chairs into use) and still not been able to handle the crowd. Of course there was that one odd-year primary election I worked at, where we had 7 judges and only 4 votes all day. You just can't win. Thank you for all those who patiently waited and persevered on to the ballot box.

I would like to know if the polling places are not set up to handle areas that have great density in terms of population--it seemed that neighborhoods that had more single family homes had voters who did not experience more than a 10-20 minute wait, whereas those who lived in more highly populated areas had to wait outside in line for an hour or sometimes more. Also, I wonder what the rules are in terms of making some sense of lines--couldn't people be routed to start filling out a registration while those who are registered could head straight for the table where they sign in? At our polling place, there were piles of people waiting to sign in in the A-L line and no one in M-Z--the people at the back of the alphabet weren't close enough to hear the call for M-Z last names. There were a lot of people being sent back and forth and having to interrupt the process of checking in--maybe election judges have to be trained to try to get people through as fast as possible, as in a checkout line at the grocery store! I heard that some people were lucky enough to get to vote inside at places like MCAD, where they at least got to look at art (while staying toasty warm). Maybe we should get to vote inside all of the museums!

wdtj - Thank you for serving as an election judge. I thanked all the folks who were volunteering their time at my polling place, and thank you too. That said, your ACORN comment and frustration with people who exercise their right to register to vote on the day of the election are unfortunate. I'd say most of us welcomed the sight of people registering, but at Watershed at least there were the same problems with line and voter management that education1st notes above - problems not created by too many new votes but instead by an inadequate physical space and very inefficient control and organization of the voter lines.

I can handle waiting a day or two to know the election results. But I do have a problem with voters having to wait in long lines. Prior to this election I had never waited in line to vote for more than 5-10 minutes. If we need more election judges, so be it.

If voter id passed everybody would have to wait for results; maybe for days.

At the Lake and Lyndale it was well over a 2 hour wait in line to get into the door where the line was then split into those who registered and those who didn't. The staff was clearly trying hard but the organization, space, staffing clearly were not enough. Of course there will be lines but this is quite ridiculous.

Hand-counting is NOT uncommon. They also needed to hand-count the 5,500 Presidential ballots, and as expected, 90,000 were for Obama, and 12 were for Romney.

As a head judge in "suburbia"(Washington Co) we had approx 1800 people vote. Roughly 325 of these were same day registrations. We had 4 judges processing registrations, sometime doing 5 at a time(1 judge handling 2 at a time). If people knew what goes on when polls close they might understand the exactness that has to take place. There are no less than 6 or 7 counts that have to balance exactly. When dealing with that large of number of ballots, a small error on the front can lead to an hour or so of reconciliation at the end of the night. My advice...register early...or better yet, register/vote in the primary, then you're all set.