Too Long to Vote?

 The most recent complaint from the GOP in my area is that the paper ballots we now use (after decades of electro-mechanical machines that provided no individual hard copy record of each vote) "take too long" to fill out. The ballots use the "fill in the bubble" system we're all familiar with from standardized tests in school and are then scanned (just as our old test sheets were) to record the vote electronically, while the original ballot is secured for any possible future need (such as a recount).

Of course, this system was mandated by a Republican federal law that requires a hard copy of every vote and then backed up by a Republican vote in the state legislature that approved the specific system being used. Many of the complaints argue that it took up to 10 minutes to fill out the ballot in the recently completed primary election.

I find that hard to believe. I voted by mail and filled out my ballot at home. Although I did not time myself, I know I did not spend anything like 10 minutes filling in bubbles...it might have taken 5 minutes. Perhaps the problem is that there were four questions on the ballot in addition to the candidates...and, if you had not familiarized yourself with the issues being voted on, you might have needed time to read and digest them before casting your vote. But that is not a fault of the system--it's a fault of the individual voter, especially since the text of the questions was posted in every polling place for voters to read before getting their ballots and marking them. 

What's more--I know there were poll workers from both parties outside every polling place, handing out literature that included explanations of those questions and the party's stand on each. 

Oh, and the GOP preferred position on all of those questions--including two very controversial ones that the Democrats opposed--won.