TITLE: How long does it take the average voter to vote?
QUESTION [6 upvotes]: So I was helping my brother with his homework question as follows
The voting office can handle $50 \space \text {voters/hour}$ and has 20 voting stations. How long does it take the average voter to vote?
He answered saying there are $60$ minutes for each machine, so $60 \space \text   {minutes} \times 20 \space \text {machines} = 1200 \space \text {total voting minutes/ hour}$. Therefore there are $$= \frac {1200 \space \text {minutes}}{50 \text {votes}}$$ $$=24 \text {minutes/vote}$$
I can tell that the answer is wrong because $24$ minutes is too long for one person to vote. My answer is that since there $60$ minutes in an hour, and $50$ votes per hour then $$\frac {60}{50}$$ $$=1.2 \text {minutes}$$ 
I am not really sure why my brother's answer is incorrect; his method seems correct but is probably overcounting somehow. Any insight on the problem is appreciated

REPLY [8 votes]: Your brother's answer is actually absolutely correct. In your answer, you are calculating the average voting time if there was only one single voting machine, but there are $20$.

REPLY [6 votes]: Your answer ignores the fact that there are $20$ voting stations, presumably being used in parallel.  If each voter took $1.2$ minutes and you kept a single station busy, you could handle $50$ per hour.  Your brother is correct that averaged over a two hour period, you could afford each person to take $24$ minutes.  Each station would handle $5$ people for a total of $100$, or $50$ per hour.  
Probably your input data does not match reality.  In my area we have only three voting stations and there are over 200 people in the precinct.  Of course, not all show up, but they want to be able to handle a surge, not just the average level.