Long Lines
It’s worth saying that I do think this Corner reader is on to something — long lines can be a sign of extraordinary voter enthusiasm, but they can also be a sign of all kinds of other things. The line at my polling place was tremendous. But in part that was because the process moved very slowly. When you got to the front of “the” line, you were split into several separate lines according to your place in the alphabet. Then when you got to the front of that line, your name was checked on the rolls and you were given a little card indicating which ballot you should have (we have some hyper-local races such that even within the same precinct different people are in different areas). Then you went and stood on another line. At the front of that line were two people accepting cards and handing out ballots — either a paper ballot or else an card to use the voting computer. Then you either had to stand on another line to use the single computer in the precinct, or else fill out your paper ballot and then stand on another line to put the ballot into the scan machine.
I wouldn’t say that any of the election workers were “incompetent,” but several of them could have been more efficient. Had they been, the line would have been shorter. And if the precinct had two computers, two scan machines for paper ballots, eight people handing out cards and four people handing out ballots (instead of one, one, four, and two) the lines would have been much shorter.
That said, none of this is a coincidence per se. We just have a crappy, hyper-localized system of administering elections in this country. The result, as Drum and Klein observe is longer lines and underresourced elections at low-income and minority precincts, and short lines in more affluent ones.
44 Responses to “Long Lines”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
November 4th, 2008 at 11:46 am
I assume then, that you will take the day off and volunteer to work a polling place next election rather than just whine about it?
November 4th, 2008 at 11:50 am
At my location in Logan Circle, but the way the boundries are drawn incorporating a lot of Shaw, there was a line of about 200 people when I got in line right before the polls opened, but it only took me about 30 minutes. I was actually quite impressed with the efficency.
Normally when I have voted (except when I lived in Oregon and it was done by mail) the poll workers were all of the elderly variety. Today, there were lots of youngish 20 and 30s poll workers. I think that made the process quicker.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:50 am
These elections take a great deal of choreography and they only happen once every four years. These frustrations are inevitable.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:50 am
I’m always surprised when I hear about long lines. Most of my adult life has been in California and Texas, and I’ve never had to wait in a long line to vote. I suspect this is something that happens in the Northeast, mostly. Also, every state should adopt early voting. We have it here in Texas and it’s awesome. Makes it much easier to vote – you can do it when it is convenient, not necessarily on election day.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:51 am
In Chile, the pollworkers are randomly selected from the registered voters from each precinct (and fined harshly if they don’t show up). They’re excused if they’re over 70. Precincts have about 300 registered voters each.
Seems like a better system in every way than the American system of too few precincts, staffed by pollworkers who are mostly over 70.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:53 am
The lines here were quite long also (waited about 1.5 hours). While the system seemed ‘inefficient’, it moved no slower than the availability of voting booths. The space was quite simply too small to handle the voters, who consequently had to wait out on the street (fortunately, warm and sunny in New England today).
November 4th, 2008 at 11:53 am
Most of my adult life has been in California and Texas more affluent precincts, and I’ve never had to wait in a long line to vote.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:58 am
I would love to do a time study in what is the mean time and the S. D. for voters in different precients. I would offer a hypothesis that rich voters are slightly better at following directions than poor voters and would design the test to study that hypothesis.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:59 am
I voted at the MLK library at 9th and G NW in DC. In the morning there was a long line that wrapped through the lobby. I left and went to work. I just went back around 11:30 and there was no line at any of the different stations. I was in an out in 5 minutes.
Oh and I rode my bike.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:03 pm
I assume then, that you will take the day off and volunteer to work a polling place next election rather than just whine about it?
Or maybe instead of just whining he could try to use his prominent and widely read political blog to attempt to draw attention to the issue.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
Warm and sunny in NE indeed. I went to the polls 1 and half hours after they opened and didn’t wait even one minute. However, I did happen to stroll by the polling place shortly before it opened and there was a line of about 50 people.
While my district is a city, it is also predominately wealthy. There were 6 people registering people. The registers also gave out the ballots. There were 3 people handing out markers (no machines here) and about 20+ booths in total, all in the middle school gym.
In short, plenty of resources to go around.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:05 pm
I’ve always found these stories from US elections very odd. Here in the UK we have paper ballots instead of machines. I have voted in a number of different parts of the country and never waited more than a few minutes, and I don’t remember ever hearing stories in the news of other people waiting for hours either. All the votes get counted without too much fuss by the early hours of the morning after a general election. As far as I remember, our turnout figures are generally higher than yours. Presumably we just have more people working on running the election than you do, but it doesn’t seem like it would be very complicated or controversial or expensive to fix that, especially given that you spend hugely more on campaigns than we do. Does anyone know any statistics about numbers of polling places etc?
November 4th, 2008 at 12:06 pm
I voted in Bristol Township, PA which had an interesting contrast for voting. The room in which the voting took place had two wards, ward 5 which is made up of overwhelmingly black neighborhoods, and ward 7 which is overwhelmingly working class white. (I have seen a compelling case made that Obama’s “bitter” remark was a response to a passage in a New York Times article quoting someone in a bar two blocks from where I voted who I suspect lives in ward 7). Despite being white, I happen to live in Ward 5.
The assignemnt of election workers and machines were the same on both sides of the room. But Ward 5 had an hour wait, which seemed to have grown before I left. Ward 7 had walk up voting. So for the most part, if you were black you had to wait an hour (although so did I) and if you were white you did not have to wait at all. Although most white voters got at the end of the line until election officials came to collect them and point them to the table with no line.
It seems pretty safe this was an enthusiasm gap and not some kind of affluence gap or racism on the part of election officials.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:11 pm
I’d suggest that legislation to fix the horribly broken and biased administration of federal elections should be a high priority to be passed within the next year. With big Democratic
majorities, and (fingers crossed) a president who knows what it’s like for urban minority voters, we should be able to get
the system really fixed so that no-one has to stand in line for hours. That would be both a good policy, and very probably advantageous to the Democratic party’s prospects.
In particular, control of the registration process and the vote-counting should be in the hands of independent non-partisan officials. And the legislation should mandate auditing of random samples, carried out by a separate independent organization, to ensure that there are checks
and accountability for the accuracy of the process. All
subject to congressional oversight as well.
I’m not sure about the constitutional
implications of taking this away from the states: maybe it means we have to completely separate federal elections from
elections for state offices, but if so, we should do it.
And maybe we can also move polling day to the weekend ? Or
would that require a constitutional amendment ? Or else
mandate availability of postal and/or early voting.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
I just voted in Vermont when the polls opened (at 7 am). There were two lines of about fifty people, it took maybe fifteen minutes for us to go through; then at the front, they checked your name, gave you a ballot, and let you sit at one of a whole bunch of tables to fill it out with a pen. Then you drop it into a box. It’s going to be counted by a machine, I’m pretty sure, but nobody had to wait for anyone else to keep filling out their ballot. And I’ll bet it’s a lot cheaper than voting machines. (Admittedly, even the largest city in Vermont isn’t a very big place.)
We could mandate paper ballots in order to assure that lines move quicker, but I don’t think that’s what everyone wants.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:13 pm
8: I would love to do a time study in what is the mean time and the S. D. for voters in different precients. I would offer a hypothesis that rich voters are slightly better at following directions than poor voters and would design the test to study that hypothesis.
You’re a nasty, mean, smug little man, really, aren’t you?
November 4th, 2008 at 12:14 pm
I just waited a little over an hour to vote in Brookline, MA. Brookline is arguably the most liberal suburb of Boston, nicknamed during my childhood “the peoples’ republic of brookline.” The vast majority there were voting for Obama and made it known loudly–the town is so Democratic that for most local offices the Democratic incumbent ran unopposed. Did I mention that this is Barney Frank’s home town?
I don’t know if you can get to a more polarized liberal area than Brookline, but the lines were still over an hour.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:18 pm
Jeremy – I am in Brookline as well. Very white, very wealthy area, using paper ballots. Why the wait?
ps- I recently moved here, and was shocked to see that there were no opposition candidates for local offices.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:21 pm
I don’t know if you can get to a more polarized liberal area than Brookline, but the lines were still over an hour.
Well, yes, you can get to a more polarized liberal area than Brookline, actually. (Thanks for the setup.) In Park Slope (Brooklyn) right now (12:30 PM) both of the polling places in my neighborhood have lines out the door and almost all the way around the block. I can’t imagine the wait time is under two hours–those lines are looong.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:28 pm
How difficult is it to vote by mail in various parts of the country? I’ve been doing it for years (initially due to travel, but soon realized it is more convenient whether traveling or not). Here in California (I’m in Contra Costa county) they instituted “permanent vote by mail” status several years ago, which means they automatically send your mail ballot and eliminate the step of having to request one before every election. I believe that somewhere north of thirty or forty percent of in my county vote that way.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
“and short lines in more affluent ones.”
Being in an affluent district, I can say my line was very short. I waited three minutes, but that’s only because the woman in front of me took two minutes to find her ID. In comparison, it took me twelve minutes to walk to the polling place and sixteen minutes to complete the ballot (lots of initiatives an recalls). Nice to be in a wealthy district. Rachael Maddow is right, long lines are effectively a poll tax on poor people.
November 4th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
Ajay,
Are you really going to argue that education, wealthy, intelligence does not affect how people respond to customer service? Have you ever watched people in line at a store?
November 4th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
That said, none of this is a coincidence per se. We just have a crappy, hyper-localized system of administering elections in this country.
You vote in DC, right? In other words, being a Democrat or having Democrats in charge for multiple generations means never having to take responsibility for one’s failiures. It’s always someone else’s fault.
From voting to education, transportation to land use, your solution to every single problem is to federalize every darn thing. Why not just take home rule away from DC entirely and give all the authority and responsibility back to Congress?
November 4th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
In expectations of long lines, I went to my polling place this morning (west side of Manhattan) with a snack and a sketchbook (I’m an artist and thought I’d get some good new drawings for my blog). But no: in and out in fifteen minutes. Didn’t look different from any other election day, although the fact that I went at 9:30 after normal people were at work (did I mention I’m an artist?) may have made a difference.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Good turnout — but we always have good turnout — in my high income and 2/3rds Democratic CT suburb. Total process took 5 minutes at most, no lines, around noon. Best weather imaginable.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
I arrived at my polling place in Woodland Hills, California, a wealthy area, at about 8:00 this morning (polls opened at 7:00), and there was a line that looked to have about 100 people in it. I was just dropping off my vote-by-mail envelope, so I bypassed the line and was directed to stand behind two other people briefly before being told I could just drop it in the box. The line looked like it was moving OK; there were maybe 6 to 8 booths set up.
There were about 2 dozen items on our ballot, which could be one explanation for why it takes longer than in Britain. Also, it’s kind of nice to be able to pick our head of state.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
I wouldn’t say that any of the election workers were “incompetent,” but several of them could have been more efficient
I would say that one of the election workers, if not incompetent, was just not that good at his job. However, keep in mind that this is pretty much par for customer service in DC.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:39 pm
These frustrations are inevitable.
Really? I think you mean ‘these frustrations happen every four years, and then we forget about the changes that could make them less frustrating’.
On Richard Cownie’s point: the obvious approach seems to be some kind of federal mandate that guarantees adequate funding to county boards in exchange for compliance with a set of procedural standards. Let the states buy into it.
I do think that there needs to be a severe re-assessment of the kind of ballots that are dumped on voters. The number of people who give a fuck about who’s running for State Commissioner of Widget Management is only slightly higher than the number of people running for State Commissioner of Widget Management. And I fucking hate government-by-plebiscite.
November 4th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
As an experienced poll worker who regrettably could not work today due to an overwhelmingly important pre-existing commitment I’d like to add my 2 cents.
1. Poll workers no matter how competent get maybe 2-4 hours of training a year (tops) and work maybe three days a year on a busy year. At their most efficient, they will never match even a PT worker who does it regularly.
2. Most training is on new laws and regs. Little time is ever spent on efficient paper processing.
3. Voters only vote 3 times a year (tops) and often need to relearn how to do so. And in an election like this many haven’t voted before or voted very long ago. My precinct is mixture of middle-class college professionals, health care workers (including Dr’s) students, and section 8 housing. Trust me on this. Most people are fine, well meaning, and following directions, but ALL types of people are capable of great stupidity. In fact I find poorer people tend to have more experience and patience with sluggish bureaucracy and follow direction in almost servile fashion. Richer people seem more entitled and don’t understand why rules apply to them. That is a gross generalization, and again most people are fine.
4. Being a poll worker is a lot of work, but very rewarding. Including pay. I make over $125 for one day of work. Pretty good for a graduate student. Everyone reading this should think about it if you are eligible. I don’t know if I can get behind drafting people like jury duty, but requiring employers to give you off without penalty (a la National Guard Duty or Reserves) would be a start.
November 4th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
In Ireland, we don’t tend to have to vote on more than two or three things at once, but elections use the STV PR system so filling in (and counting) ballot papers takes much longer. And yet I’ve never had to wait more than two or three minutes to vote, turnouts are quite high, and the counting is finished the next day. (We use paper ballots and pencils, the govt tried and failed to bring in electronic voting machines)
Why do you put up with such a crappy system?
November 4th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
I waited 15 minutes in San Francisco (certainly affluent!) at 10:15 am. It would have been twenty minutes but I volunteered to use the electronic voting machine that they have for disabled voters. The word was that the line went around the block earlier in the day.
I’m sure things would have gone much faster if people didn’t have to vote on 12 state ballot measures and 22 city ballot measures.
November 4th, 2008 at 11:02 pm
I voted at about 7:45am in Minnesota today, I live in a reasonably affluent exurb. It took me 15 minutes. There were a couple of short internal lines (getting a ballot, waiting to feed the ballot into the reader), but not a big deal. I talked to a number of co-workers who had longer lines than I did, one who waited for an hour and a half. I think the workers at my polling place had the insightful idea to put out a bunch of folding chairs, so that you could either wait for one of the little fold-up voting “carrels” with the 3 sides, or you could just plop in a chair and mark your ballot. This doubled the number of people who could vote at once and sped things up a lot.
January 14th, 2009 at 9:18 am
laptop battery
laptop batteries
February 8th, 2009 at 9:18 pm
laptop battery
March 1st, 2009 at 11:14 am
viagra
It is the coolest site,keep so!
March 2nd, 2009 at 9:56 am
levitraI want to say – thank you for this!
March 11th, 2009 at 10:16 am
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
March 12th, 2009 at 4:24 pm
Haha ^^ nice, is there a section to follow the RSS feed
March 17th, 2009 at 3:43 am
I bookmarked this site. Thank you for good job!
tramadol
March 22nd, 2009 at 7:49 am
tramadol
I want to say – thank you for this!
March 22nd, 2009 at 11:37 am
buy viagra online
Very interesting site. Hope it will always be alive!
April 16th, 2009 at 10:08 pm
Hello. We are made to persist. That’s how we find out who we are.
I am from Northern and too poorly know English, give please true I wrote the following sentence: “The lowest prices and best customer reviews for airline tickets will airline tickets increase lt; lt; find cheap flights, airline tickets and discount airfare.”
Best regards
, Devin.
April 19th, 2009 at 8:48 am
zO4crz edjshprxhfzt, [url=http://xcxecobohzbt.com/]xcxecobohzbt[/url], [link=http://zwklkwqdhbqg.com/]zwklkwqdhbqg[/link], http://beqfnrzftarz.com/
April 20th, 2009 at 10:37 am
Good job., Buy Ambien, 1677, Hoodia, =((, Clonazepam, remj, Ultram, eaqelr, Buy Cialis Online, 876241,