First, this is "early voting", which has only been in existence in the US for about 10 years or so. Given that a large number of voters only vote every 4 years, that's not a lot of iterations. Before then, everybody voted on a single day.

The difference is that there are far fewer early voting places than normal voting places. For example, in my county there were about a dozen early voting places, but there will be about 200 polls open tomorrow. But the early voting places were available for weeks. Meaning you could find a good day to spend a while voting.

I'd say that, generally speaking, people wait no more than an hour in an average election, and probably far less time than that in the majority of cases. However, this is no average election. In NC in 2004 (the last presidential election), about 3.5 million people voted. This time, it's expected to be around 4.6 million. 2.6 million have already voted.

Yes. People are standing in line for hours. And it's because they have unusually strong feelings about this election. At least part of that is due to Bush's approval ratings being in the ranks of the lowest scores ever received by a US president over the past few weeks.

I have no idea what the actual election day lines will look like tomorrow. But I'm going to find out.