I’ve been following elections since 2000. One scene that takes place every election goes something like this. There’s a reporter standing in front of some polling location with a long line, around an hour or so before the polls close. They typically say something like this.
“I’m here in downtown Philadelphia (or Detroit, Miami, Columbus, Atlanta, etc,). This polling location is about to close in an hour, but the line stretches around the block and people are still arriving. Poll workers want to assure the people in line that they will get to cast their ballot as long as they are in line by 9 PM (or whatever the closing time is), but after that they are out of luck so if you want to vote get here soon.”
This scenario seems to repeat itself every four years. Why does this happen, how far back does this go, and what can be done to fix the problem? I get that the reflexive answer is to blame Republicans wanting fewer people in urban areas voting, but surely the problem isn’t that simple.
I don’t think it’s always (or even often) a matter of too few polling places. I think there are multiple factors - for example, the polls where I live are open 6 am to 9 pm and I would say probably half the people (or more) show up to my polling site after 6pm. But possibly the biggest factor is that in a big city, there will always be be a few polling places with long lines. Even with early voting and mail-in voting for the past few years, still the TV stations manage to find some with long lines at 7 or 8 pm.
Yes I think it likely that the TV stations go looking for the places with the long lines as it makes a more interesting story. So the long lines are not actually representative of the average polling place.
However, it is a quantifiable fact that reductions in polling locations and staffing are real snd increasing problems even while GOP officials purge voter roles, impose restrictions, and try to roll back mail-in and early in-person voting:
Yep. The media is always interested in showing the extremes of their subject matter. Not the typical. When going to a small town after a flood they will find the lowest point in town where one poor resident has a foot of water on his property and report from there while the rest of the town gets an inch or two.
My personal experience from voting on both suburban and urban areas in multiple states, the longest lines were certainly in cities.
That said I’ve never waited more than 45 minutes to vote anywhere in the dozens of elections (state, local, federal, primary, general). Most of the time less than 15 minutes.
I’d guess it’s for the same “reasons” that we still vote on a workday. Kind of crazy, no? I strongly suspect there are folks who don’t vote simply because they don’t have time that day, and can’t or won’t use another method.
And I further suspect that’s exactly how some people want it. I remember the pushback against the so-called “motor voter” idea, and despite all protestations to the contrary I came to the conclusion that some people are threatened by the idea of more of the populace voting.
My understanding is that there’s some truth to both news reports focusing on where there are lines, as well as some governments intentionally making voting more difficult in urban areas which traditionally vote Democratic.
FWIW, the only time I ever had to wait more than a few minutes to vote was my very first election as a voter: the 1984 general election. I was living in the dorms at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and our local polling place was in the lower level of one of the dormitory dining halls – I suspect that the vast majority of voters assigned to that polling place were students / dorm residents.
My roommate and I had decided to go vote after dinner (i.e., getting to the polling place a little after 6pm). Unfortunately, that seemed to be everyone’s idea, and we waited in line for about 2 hours, finally getting to vote a bit after 8pm.
As I was leaving the polling place, I saw a pollworker watching the election coverage on a little portable TV. I asked him, “how’s it looking?” The reply: “Reagan’s won 31 states already, Mondale has D.C.”
Our polling location in Anchorage was at the Sons of Norway lodge. Nearly impossible to get to if you had something that rode lower than an SUV. Also difficult to find, being located down a rutted and potholed dirt road with no signage pointing the way, other than one small one in front of the building.
Portland was a breeze, as vote-by-mail is the norm, and there are ballot drop-off boxes located on major neighborhood streets.
Here in MSP, our polling place is at a local art museum that is about 3-4 blocks away from us and has free parking on election day. I can’t speak to the rest of the city, but I’d be surprised if the polls were any less convenient. Makes you ponder why red states make it so difficult, doesn’t it?
– and, there are some Christians who won’t vote on a Sunday and some Jews who won’t do so on a Saturday or on a Friday evening. So it pretty much has to be a weekday; but even if it weren’t, there would still be a lot of people working – and the group still working would be biased towards those in lower wage jobs, meaning that a weekend day would make it relatively harder for poor people to vote than for those better off. And declaring a given weekday to be a federal or even a state holiday wouldn’t help most workers a bit, as that affects only a few workplaces.
That seems likely to me.
Lines in my rural area, for what it’s worth, are either short or nonexistent, depending pretty much on what time you show up.
Polling place is the village hall (I think other districts in the county do something similar); or, for early voting in person, at the county offices building. – I just checked the other districts in the county. Town halls, village halls, firehouses, and in one case the high school.
No it’s not. On a weekday you are less likely to be out of town, spending all day at the zoo with your family, at the neighbor’s barbeque drinking, etc.
Even accepting the arguments against making election day a holiday of some sort as made in good faith, it still sounds like rationalization to me. I have no doubt the same types who want to make voting more difficult are quite happy that it’s on a weekday when voters are very possibly too busy to vote.
Which brings up other ways to make voting more accessible through mail-in, online, etc. And that brings more forceful pushback.
The way I see it, there are very entrenched forces that want voting to be as inconvenient and difficult as possible. I suspect they believe (correctly) the hindrances already in place are more likely to affect voters their ideologies probably won’t capture. So I’d say making election day at least a “bank holiday” is the goddam least we could do in terms of making voting easier.
In addition to all the responses above, it strikes me as possible that urban election commissions have problems finding suitable spaces for polling places. It takes a fair amount of square footage for voting booths (with enough space between to assure privacy), check-in counters, etc.
My county has a lot of its polling places in churches, but I live in an area where you almost can’t throw a stone in any direction without it landing on church property. Plus the county is wealthy enough that churches almost universally have large community rooms sufficient for a polling place. This may not be true in many urban areas.
Suitable commercial spaces aren’t that plentiful, and often the company really can’t give up the space and still conduct its business. Schools are a possibility, but they have special security issues that make them likely to prefer not to host a polling place.
I’m opposed to switching from a weekday, on the grounds previously stated. That will make access easier for some people but much harder for others; and in addition to religious bias will weight heavily against poorer people, who are far more likely to have jobs requiring weekend work.
I’m strongly in favor of allowing mail-in voting. Also of longer voting hours, and of early voting, including early voting on any day of the week.
Everyone I know* who works in IT is strongly against online voting, on security grounds.
[*someone on this board who works in IT and favors it chiming in in 4 … 3 … 2 …]
I realize there are a lot of hacks. Recently there was the social security number exposure and nothing can ever be made 100% secure whether it’s a computer or a pencil and paper system. Yet the bank I’ve used for decades, both before and after the onset of online banking, has never once made an error in amounts and my accounts (to my knowledge) have never been compromised.
How is it we are capable of that, but online voting can’t be managed? I realize it’s not the exact same problem and I won’t pretend to be tech savvy enough to debate the particulars. But it sure seems like we’ve proved the concept and it can be done. What gives? If the banks can manage money with computers and online, why can’t we do voting similarly?
The second one’s trying to be reassuring, but note this among other points it makes:
The Federal Trade Commission reported that bank fraud losses overall grew 21% in 2022, the most recent data available.
And no, I’m not competent, any more than you say you are, to explain the technical details of why the people I know in IT say online voting wouldn’t be secure.
In common parlance that I understand, a “workday” generally refers to weekdays. Of course I realize people work on weekends, as I often do. But I’ll go out on a limb here and guess that many more people work on weekdays. Our election day in the United States falls on one of those weekdays.
Others have mentioned weekends could be problematic for voting for religious reasons. My suggestion earlier was to make election day a “bank holiday”. Meaning if we’re going to keep it on a weekday, at least make it a federal day off. Do I understand that doesn’t apply to every last person and won’t solve the problem entirely? Why yes, I do. I see it as a modest suggestion to at least make voting easier for some portion of the populace. You know, considering that currently the trend seems to lean toward making it intentionally difficult, at least in some places.
Call it a half measure if you like, and certainly making election day some sort of holiday would have its own issues - someone mentioned it might only help those with better jobs. But I’d sure like to see some effort toward making voting easier and getting more people to participate, even if they are imperfect solutions.
That’s the polite version of what I think. The unadulterated version is: It’s effing crazy that we don’t stop everything and make sure everyone who wants to vote can effing well do so. Doing it on a typical weekday is a choice that should be reconsidered, among other things. We have a paltry portion of potential voters who actually vote, and some portion that doesn’t comes down to mere inconvenience. I say again, that’s effing crazy.