What Nesrie wrote. It’s a national disgrace that there is anywhere in the country where it takes more than 1.5 hours to vote including travel time. If I were king I’d set a maximum of an hour. Congress should grant the states the money necessary to get it done, deficit be damned.
It sounds like the Arizona election official screwed up. Do you have any data as to what percentage of people waited more than 1 hour to vote?
Looking at this chart from 2012 http://www.latimes.com/la-na-g-polling-wait-time-state-photo.html it doesn’t look like long wait times are significant factor in any state other than Florida.
Averages aren’t going to uncover actual problems though if specific voter districts are targeted for poor service to dissuade voters as has happened in the last decade in Florida, Ohio, and probably elsewhere.
Well let’s see how difficult it is to find polling issues from past years… since you clearly think these are just one-offs:
Columbus OH and FL 2012 looks like around 7 hours in some locations here.
Ohio 2008 - up to 10 hours here
wanna guess if i keep going back say every 4 years I might see something similar?
No, I think it played out pretty much exactly as planned. Except the whole getting-negative-publicity-for-it bit at the end.
That has happened here during the “rush hour” a couple times in my voting life. But I have voted absentee for probably close to 20 years.
I think the problem is that the elections which actually draw the huge crowds are so rare, not even presidential elections. Often here they involve some Proposition that attracts the wrath of one side or the other. So while there may be the occasional long lines most of the times there is a very light turnout.
Well, that’s why I asked for numbers. If it is 1 million then that’s ~1% of the vote and could be significant in the presidential election, if it is 10,000 that is %.01 of the voters and isn’t important. Even if you assume that that waiting for more than an hour caused 1/2 the people to quit, unless it was concentrated in a one or two congressional race it isn’t going to matter.
But I don’t understand, why the Republican would care about depressing voters in Democratic Primary. I could see how Bernie would want to depress minority voters, but explain to me why Republican would care. Hillary is going be the nominee.
They don’t care about the Democratic primary. What happened there is just a symptom of a longer term plan to systemically reduce polling places by more than 50% since 2008. It’s surely a coincidence that minority neighborhoods lost more polling spots than others.
Abridging the voting rights of a single individual (ought to be) a goddamn Constitutional crisis. It is the literal foundation of our democracy. I don’t have a ton of first principles in politics, other than that the government should be arranged to be generally fair and do the greatest good for the greatest number of people without limiting freedom unduly, but voting rights are absolute bedrock and should never be even within spitting distance of messed with by anyone. Ever.
Yeah, but it’s other people, and poor people at that, so… It’s okay than? I might have misinterpreted Strollen’s remarks.
I agree. But you know what sometimes (actually I think quite often) government employees screw up. I totally agree nobody should have to wait for more than an hour to cast a vote.
I have worked as a poll worker and poll watcher. So I know Shit happens, the van that was supposed to deliver the ballots to the polling places breaks down and the polling place opens 2 hours late, (happened to a friend). The scanner jams and nobody thought to test the backup scanner so you wait for an hour while election HQ sends out a replacement. (happened to me) two or three poll workers don’t show up (happened to my precinct captain many times.). But most of the times at most precinct in the country you have 1/2 dozen+ poll worker who process about 20-30 voters an hour (hence the 1-10 minute average wait times.) spend most of the day doing nothing.
Are there times when the system completely breaks down at a neighborhood, or city level and rarely at a state level? Yup Are these screw up more common in poor/minority area? Perhaps? Has anybody produced anything but anecdotal data? NO.
It sounds all wonderful to say “we should spend what it takes to make sure it really easy for people to vote”. But realize that many/most city and states are currently operating in SimCity impossible level. If you want to beef up the number of polling places, do you take money from the transportation department and risk more bridges failing, or from the water department (see Flint), social services (homeless people freezing), health dept (cockroaches don’t eat much) or just short-changed the pension system for the 8th time in the last 10 years.
Personally, if I was Mayor or Governor, I’d rather take the chance that people have to wait longer to vote, than cut stuff that actually might kill people. At least, that would be my approach until I knew the magnitude of the problem.
Kind of off topic but California is playing with the idea of requiring politicians who resign having to pay the costs of special elections to replace them. It in theory would be done from their campaign war chests which most have. A district here is having to replace a state rep who resigned to become a lobbyist and therefore the county/state has to pay for a special election. I think it is projected as a $200k cost.
I like that. Not sure what it would lead to, but force the disgraced congressmen and women to serve out their term in shame.
Hey, would that apply to those forced out of office? What about special sessions?
That sounds like a terrible idea with a number of easily thought-out unintended consequences.
“Congressman Wisdom, your unhealthy sexual appetites involving sea slugs and other marine invertebrates have been painstakingly detailed in this month’s ‘Vanity Fair’. There are literally crowds of people with pitchforks and torches surrounding your office. Will you resign?”
“Well Megyn, I’d love to. This entire episode has shown that I have terrible judgement and should not be allowed anywhere near the Capitol Building or a seashore. But the fact of the matter is that I cannot afford the $200K it would cost me to resign; I’ve spent all my money on these beautiful saltwater fishtanks you see around you. I am pretty much forced to remain in office here until my term is over, where I will continue to draw a salary from the people of the united states and use their money to fly around on official travel… like the trip i have planned to Monterrey Aquarium next week.”
I don’t know if it would apply to representatives “forced out”. It has been talked about as applying to reps who leave for other jobs. I mean come on, you are only elected for 2 years anyway and you feel the need to quit 8 months early so you can become a lobbyist? I kinda like the idea if it is applied that way.
http://www.latimes.com/local/politics/la-me-pol-sac-cap-20160107-column.html
An LA Times article that talks about letting the Governor fill the spots. Note in the article it states that the Rep. in question has $1m in campaign funds and that the special election will cost closer to $500k.
The proposed idea.
In terms of paying for polling stations, maybe the parties should be doing that? Then you’d basically have a concerted effort of the parties to make sure that they get them set up correctly to help their voters, and for any place you’d have at least ONE of the parties who gave a shit about it.
The idea that the local populace has to pay for things like primary elections is kind of bullshit anyway. I say make the parties pay for this stuff.
I don’t see any possibility for problems with having the parties handling the polling places. (sarcasm)
Note I didn’t say control them, I said PAY for them.
If you were king you’d both have absolute authority to bring doing wait time to an hour yet you’d still allow voting? Something tells me just being an absolutist king would solve your wait time problem without any action on your part.