One of the biggest primary days of this midterm election cycle has finally arrived; Firedoglake’s community will be following the results as polls close in California, Iowa, Maine, Montana, Nevada, New Jersey, North Dakota, South Carolina, South Dakota, Virginia and Arkansas. But what times do the polls close and open in these states, you might wonder? That’s a really good question as I discovered while researching for scheduling purposes. The best answer appears below, with a link to each state’s Secretary of State or Election Commission office for you to confirm any voting information you may need if you live in these states.

Let me interject here and say that it’s absolutely insane that all 50 states have completely different websites with grossly variable differences in their user interfaces. It’s actually rare to find a state site which is easy to navigate, and rarer still to find one which posts the polling place opening and closing times on the main voter information page.

New Jersey’s page feels like a time warp back to 1998, but it actually shows the poll open/close time in a big bold crawl on the front page. Surprisingly, South Carolina’s site is the most navigable of the eleven states having primaries this Tuesday — odd for a state which has been so busy sleeping around with everybody else on the way to the Appalachian Trail.

What’s really inexcusable is that all 50 states elections are governed by the same federal laws, and the secretaries of state or election commission personnel meet at conferences to discuss best practices. Share those practices, for the love of democracy, please; aim for a little more consistency and ease of use, unless you are trying to disenfranchise voters. In that case, knock it the hell off or voters will be dealing with you at election time to fix the problem.

State w/ SOS or Elections resource link Polling place opening and closing times
Maine Opening varies, 6:00 a.m. and 10:00 a.m; all close 8:00 p.m. EDT
New Jersey 6:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. EDT
South Carolina 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT
Virginia 6:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. EDT
Arkansas 7:30 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. CDT
Iowa 7:00 a.m. To 9:00 p.m. Statewide CDT
Montana Believed to be 7 a.m. to 8 p.m (Missoulian.com) MDT
North Dakota Highly dependent on size of town and location; According to Green Papers:

"Polls close asynchronously at 9:00p CDT (0200 UTC) / 9:00p MDT (0300 UTC). Voting places open between 7:00a to 12:00n and remain open until 7:00p to 9:00p depending on the size of the town. The western half of the state is in MDT but that is, of course, the more sparsely populated part of the state, so it is not as problematic to the networks as might be otherwise suggested by simple geography."

See downloadable XLS at state website.
South Dakota Believed to be 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. MDT – confirm with SD-SOS
California 7:00 a.m. to 8:00 p.m. PDT
Nevada Believed to be 7 a.m. and close at 7 p.m. (see NRS 293.273) PDT

If something here isn’t accurate, please leave a note in comments with a link to a better source. Obviously we’ll be following the poll closing times closely to watch for results — the Senate’s on the line and we don’t want to miss a bit of what may be some of the greatest drama between now and Election 2012.