Seen today on a blog I read (don't blame me!)

Why do Americans have to queue for so long to cast their votes? Is it just another aspect of the general American concern to make it tricky to cast a vote that's been kicking around for quite a while now, or is there something else going on that I don't know about? Or do the press just pick up on the long queues in some particularly inefficient parts of the country, even though most Americans can just pop along to the local polling station and cast a ballot in a minute or two, as in the rest of the democratic world? From my memory of living over there ten years ago, Americans don't much like queuing. Not like us Brits, anyway.

I think Charley may have supplied the answer, or part of it -

In my small town in Maine (4000 population) there is only one polling place

One polling station for 4000 voters? When I go to vote it's at a polling station which serves about a fifth of that. They have five or six booths set up (with pencil-and-paper voting an extra booth isn't expensive), and I'm in and out in five minutes.