[Long waits at polling places are disruptive, disenfranchising,
and all too common. Black and Latino voters are especially likely to
endure them.] [[link removed]]

WAITING TO VOTE   [[link removed]]

 

Hannah Klain, Kevin Morris, Max Feldman, Rebecca Ayala
July 3, 2020
Brennan Center For Justice
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_ Long waits at polling places are disruptive, disenfranchising, and
all too common. Black and Latino voters are especially likely to
endure them. _

, Brian Blanco/Getty

 

Foreword

The pictures of Milwaukeeans waiting in line to vote on April 7 with
homemade personal protective equipment were both beautiful and
horrifying. It was beautiful — inspiring even — that with a deadly
pandemic on their doorsteps, so many people still cared so much about
their right to vote that they went to the polls. And it was horrifying
that they had to risk their health in order to do so.

News reports indicated that Milwaukee, the most diverse city in a
largely white state, had reduced its usual 180 polling sites to just
five. Covid-19 has exposed serious problems in our election systems,
and it has made the need for reform urgent. Voters of color and
demographically changing communities all across the country already
knew this, though. As this report details, Black and Latino Americans
face longer wait times on Election Day than white voters. In the past,
long wait times were disruptive and disenfranchising. In the middle of
a pandemic, they could also be deadly.

Though completed before the eruption of the coronavirus, this report
is even more critical now because it provides information regarding
community needs as well as mistakes commonly made in planning for and
staffing in-person voting. While the risk of Covid-19 will no doubt
move more voters to cast their ballots by mail, some communities —
more typically communities of color rely on polling places. We must
make sure that there are in-person options, and that they have enough
of the right kinds of resources.

The period leading up to the November general election will be marked
by extreme disruption and hardship in all facets of American life. At
the time of publication, the pandemic has killed more than 100,000
Americans. It has also caused schools to close, people to lose their
jobs, and Americans to distance themselves from one another. Our
fundamental right to vote and our democratic processes are more
important than ever: The officials we elect will make high-stakes
decisions that will impact our health, safety, and welfare.

In these dire times, our country will not benefit from the judgment
and experiences of all its citizens unless all Americans can vote
freely and safely.

Myrna Pérez
Director, Voting Rights and Elections Program
Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law

Introduction

The 2018 general election saw the highest turnout in a midterm in
decades. 1
[[link removed]] While
many voters were able to cast a ballot quickly and easily in that
election, others faced hours-long lines, malfunctioning voting
equipment, and unexpectedly closed polling places. 2
[[link removed]] We
estimate that some 3 million voters waited 30 minutes or more to cast
their ballot. 3
[[link removed]] Many
of these voters were concentrated in the southeastern United States,
home to large shares of nonwhite voters.

Long lines and wait times have plagued several elections over the past
decade. 4
[[link removed]] The
consequences can be far reaching. For example, the Bipartisan Policy
Center estimates that more than half a million eligible voters failed
to vote in 2016 because of problems associated with the management of
polling places, including long waits. 5
[[link removed]]

For this report, we analyzed data from two nationwide election surveys
regarding the 2018 election: the Cooperative Congressional Election
Study, a 60,000-person survey on Election Day experiences, and the
U.S. Election Assistance Commission’s Election Administration and
Voting Survey, which asks administrators detailed questions about how
they conduct elections. We also interviewed nearly three dozen state
and local election administrators. 6
[[link removed]] Further,
we examined the electoral statutes on the books in every state in the
nation to understand the sources of disparate wait times in 2018 and
develop policy recommendations for lawmakers and election officials
ahead of 2020. 7
[[link removed]] Some
previous research has investigated the relationship between wait times
and electoral resources — specifically polling places, voting
machines, and poll workers. 8
[[link removed]] But
no prior study has examined the relationship on a nationwide scale. We
find:

* Latino and Black voters were more likely than white voters to
report particularly long wait times, and they waited longer
generally. 9
[[link removed]] Latino
and Black voters were more likely than white voters to wait in the
longest of lines on Election Day: some 6.6 percent of Latino voters
and 7.0 percent of Black voters reported waiting 30 minutes or longer
to vote, surpassing the acceptable threshold for wait times set by the
Presidential Commission on Election Administration, compared with only
4.1 percent of white voters. 10
[[link removed]] More
generally, Latino voters waited on average 46 percent longer than
white voters, and Black voters waited on average 45 percent longer
than white voters.
* Voters in counties with fewer electoral resources per voter,
relative to other counties, reported longer wait times in 2018. In
this report, we offer the first national-level statistical evidence
that counties with fewer polling places, voting machines, and poll
workers (referred to hereafter as “electoral resources”) per
Election Day voter than other counties had longer wait times in
2018. 11
[[link removed]] By
“Election Day voters,” we mean voters who cast in-person ballots
on Election Day (referred to hereafter as “voters”). Voters in
counties with the fewest electoral resources per voter reported
waiting two to three times as long to cast a ballot on Election Day as
voters in the best-resourced counties.

Given those two statistical findings, some might conclude that voters
of color wait longer because they tend to live in counties with fewer
electoral resources. Our analyses do not support this hypothesis; on
average, we find, counties with higher minority shares of the
population did not have fewer resources per voter than whiter counties
did in 2018. Our statistical models do, however, establish that with
fewer resources, the racial wait gap would have been even larger.

* Counties that became less white over the past decade had fewer
electoral resources per voter in 2018 than counties that grew whiter.
The average county where the population became whiter had 63 voters
per worker and about 390 voters per polling place. In comparison, the
average county that became less white had 80 voters per worker and 550
voters per polling place. 12
[[link removed]]
* Similarly, counties where incomes shrank over the past decade had
fewer electoral resources per voter in 2018 than counties where
incomes grew over the same period. The average county where real
incomes grew had 74 voters per worker and 470 voters per polling
place, while counties where real incomes declined averaged 82 voters
per worker and 590 voters per polling place.

Our findings suggest that allocating equal resources among counties
and precincts is not sufficient to produce equal wait times for
voters, particularly those of color and of lower incomes. Instead,
election administrators must target those counties and precincts with
a history of long wait times and allocate enough resources to these
locations to equalize the wait times for all voters. The goal for
election administrators should be to distribute resources in a manner
that produces a similar Election Day experience for all voters.

Given these findings, we make the following recommendations to
election administrators:

* Provide resources sufficient to minimize voter wait times. Election
officials in counties that have encountered long waits in recent
elections should increase the quantity and quality of resources
allocated, and state lawmakers should ensure that resources are
allocated sensibly between and within counties to prevent disparate
wait times.
* Plan for an above-trend spike in voter turnout. Between the 2014
and 2018 midterm elections, voter turnout spiked from the lowest it
had been in 72 years to the highest in decades. 13
[[link removed]] This
created problems where election administrators had relied too heavily
on past turnout trends to allocate resources. 14
[[link removed]] Voter
turnout is poised to increase dramatically in 2020 over past
presidential elections, and election administrators should not be
misled by past trends when making resource allocation decisions. 15
[[link removed]]
* Account for policy changes that may impact turnout. State election
policies can change from election to election, and these changes may
impact the number of individuals who vote on Election Day, early in
person, absentee, or by mail. Administrators must take these new
policies into account when estimating turnout levels and allocating
resources.
* Increase compliance with resource mandates. State officials should
review their standards for resource allocation to ensure that counties
are in compliance and standards are appropriate given resource levels
and wait times. Advocates should hold states to those standards in
2020.
* Limit polling place closures. Administrators should examine voter
turnout data and early voting usage when making decisions about
eliminating polling places, and they should not do so without a firm
analytical justification.
* Develop comprehensive vote center transition plans. Administrators
should act carefully when transitioning to vote centers. Vote centers
should be piloted in lower-turnout elections, and administrators
should not close or combine voting locations until they fully
understand how vote centers will affect turnout.
* Expand language assistance. Jurisdictions that narrowly missed the
legal mandate to provide non-English-language assistance under the
Voting Rights Act should nonetheless offer language assistance in the
2020 election.

Endnotes

* 1
[[link removed]] Jens
Manuel Krogstand, Luis Noe-Bustamante, and Antonio Flores, “Historic
Highs in 2018 Voter Turnout Extended Across Racial and Ethnic
Groups,” Pew Research Center, May 1,
2019, [link removed]
[[link removed]];
Emily Stewart, “2018’s Record-Setting Voter Turnout, in One
Chart,” _Vox_, November 19,
2019, [link removed]
[[link removed]];
Ella Nilsen, “The 2018 Midterms Had the Highest Turnout Since Before
World War I,” _Vox_, December 10,
2018, [link removed]
[[link removed]];
Jordan Misra, “Voter Turnout Rates Among All Voting Age and Major
Racial and Ethnic Groups Were Higher Than in 2014,” U.S. Census
Bureau, April 23,
2019, [link removed]
[[link removed]];
Grace Sparks, “There Was Historic Voter Turnout in the 2018 Midterms
— Especially Among Young Voters,” CNN, April 23,
2019, [link removed]
[[link removed]];
and Renae Reints, “2018 Midterm Election Sets Record as the First to
Exceed Voter Turnout of 100 Million People,” _Fortune_, November 7,
2018, [link removed]
[[link removed]].
* 2
[[link removed]] Rebecca
Ayala, “Voting Problems 2018,” Brennan Center for Justice,
November 5,
2018, [link removed]
[[link removed]];
“Election Day 2018: A Brennan Center Live Blog,” Brennan Center
for Justice, November 6,
2018, [link removed]
[[link removed]];
Amy Gardner and Beth Reinhard, “Broken Machines, Rejected Ballots
and Long Lines: Voting Problems Emerge as Americans Go to the
Polls,” Washington Post, November 6,
2018, [link removed]
[[link removed]];
and Erik Ortiz et al., “Midterms 2018: Voters Face Malfunctioning
Machines and Long Lines at Polls Across Country on Election Day,”
NBC News, November 6,
2018, [link removed]
[[link removed]].
* 3
[[link removed]] This
statistic is calculated by multiplying the share of Election Day
voters who waited longer than 30 minutes by the share of all voters
who cast a ballot on Election Day, using data from the Cooperative
Congressional Election Study (CCES). Brian Schaffner, Stephen
Ansolabehere, and Sam Luks, _CCES Common Content_, 2018, Harvard
Dataverse, 2019, [link removed]
[[link removed]]. This determines the total share
of the electorate that waited 30 minutes or longer on Election Day,
according to the CCES. This share is multiplied by the total number of
ballots cast, estimated by the United States Elections Project.
“2018 November General Election Turnout Rates,” last modified
December, 14, 2018, [link removed]
[[link removed]].
* 4
[[link removed]] Matthew
Weil et al., _The 2018 Voting Experience: Polling Place Lines_,
Bipartisan Policy Center, 2019,
6, [link removed]
[[link removed]].
* 5
[[link removed]] Weil
et al., _The 2018 Voting Experience_, 3–4.
* 6
[[link removed]] Election
administrators in the following counties and states were interviewed
for this report: Shelby County, Alabama; Maricopa County, Arizona;
Forsyth County, Georgia; Fulton County, Georgia; Gwinnett County,
Georgia; Peoria County, Illinois; Prince George’s County, Maryland;
Detroit, Michigan; Macomb County, Michigan; Jackson County, Missouri;
Clark County, Nevada; Washoe County, Nevada; State of New York; Durham
County, North Carolina; Forsyth County, North Carolina; Guilford
County, North Carolina; Butler County, Ohio; Franklin County, Ohio;
Licking County, Ohio; Marion County, Ohio; State of Rhode Island;
Charleston County, South Carolina; State of South Carolina; Davidson
County, Tennessee; Denton County, Texas; Fort Bend County, Texas;
Harris County, Texas; Hays County, Texas; Tarrant County, Texas;
Travis County, Texas; Williamson County, Texas; and Manassas County,
Virginia. All interview transcripts are on file with the Brennan
Center.
* 7
[[link removed]] This
report incorporates data from three sources: the Cooperative
Congressional Election Study, the Election Administration and Voting
Survey, and the five-year American Community Survey. See Schaffner,
Ansolabehere, and Luks, _CCES Common Content_; U.S. Election
Assistance Commission, _Election Administration and Voting Survey:
2018 Comprehensive Report_,
2019, [link removed]
[[link removed]];
and Census Bureau, “American Community Survey 5-Year Data
(2009–2018),” December 19,
2019, [link removed]
[[link removed]].
* 8
[[link removed]] For
instance, Michael Herron and Daniel Smith, “Precinct Resources and
Voter Wait Times,” _Electoral Studies_ 42 (June 2016):
249, [link removed]
[[link removed]].
* 9
[[link removed]] Throughout
this report, “white” corresponds to the census designation
“non-Hispanic white.” Following the CCES, we use it as a category
exclusive of Latinos. “Voters of color” refers specifically to
Black and Latino voters.
* 10
[[link removed]] Brennan
Center for Justice, “Bipartisan Presidential Commission Endorses
Modernizing Voter Registration,” December 1,
2014, [link removed]
[[link removed]].
* 11
[[link removed]] We
define “resources” throughout this report as the number of
in-person Election Day votes per Election Day polling place, poll
workers, and machines available
* 12
[[link removed]] These
differences are significant at the 95 percent confidence level.
* 13
[[link removed]] For
turnout in 2014, see David Becker, “2014 Midterms Defined by Low
Voter Turnout,” Pew Research Center,
2014, [link removed]
[[link removed]].
For turnout in 2018, see Krogstand, Noe-Bustamante, and Flores,
“Historic Highs in 2018 Voter Turnout.”
* 14
[[link removed]] See
“Inadequate Planning Practices” in Section V.
* 15
[[link removed]] Susan
Milligan, “Preparing for a Voter Surge,” _US News & World
Report_, September 20,
2019, [link removed]
[[link removed]].

DOWNLOAD THE FULL REPORT
[[link removed]]

HANNAH KLAIN is an Equal Justice Works Fellow in the Democracy
Program, focusing on documenting and combatting discriminatory
electoral resource allocation in traditionally disenfranchised
communities. Klain graduated from the Harvard Law School, where she
was president of the Harvard Law chapter of the American Constitution
Society and a research assistant to former Dean Martha Minow. While in
law school, Hannah interned with the Brennan Center's Democracy
Program, as well as with the ACLU Voting Rights Project, the NAACP
Legal Defense Fund, and the Campaign Legal Center. Klain graduated cum
laude from Columbia University and her work after college included
serving as a staff member in the Communications and Policy Departments
of the Hillary Clinton 2016 Campaign in Brooklyn. Her Equal Justice
Works fellowship is sponsored by the Selbin Family.

KEVIN MORRIS is a quantitative researcher with the Democracy Program,
focusing on voting rights and elections. His research focuses on the
impact of laws and policies on access to the polls, with a particular
focus on rights restoration and voter list maintenance.

Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Morris worked as an economic
researcher focusing on housing at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York
and an economist at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. He
has a BA from Boston College in economics. He has a master’s degree
in urban planning from NYU’s Wagner School, with an emphasis in
quantitative methods and evaluation.

MAX FELDMAN is counsel in the Voting Rights and Elections Program at
the Brennan Center for Justice. He litigates voting rights cases,
counsels lawmakers and administrators on voting legislation and
policy, and researches voting law trends. He has coauthored several
reports on state voting laws and regularly writes about and comments
on voting issues in a variety of media outlets.

Prior to joining the Brennan Center, Feldman was a lawyer in private
practice. He began his legal career as a law clerk to Hon. Bruce M.
Selya of the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. He
has also served as head speechwriter to Gov. David Paterson of New
York and as a speechwriter to Gov. Bill Richardson of New Mexico
during his campaign for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Feldman received his JD magna cum laude from NYU School of Law, where
he was elected to the Order of the Coif and served as an articles
editor of the NYU Law Review. He received his undergraduate degree
from Harvard College.

REBECCA AYALA is a research and program associate at the Brennan
Center for Justice.

THE BRENNAN CENTER fights to make elections fair, end mass
incarceration, and preserve our liberties — in Congress, the states,
the courts, and the court of public opinion. JOIN US IN BUILDING AN
AMERICA THAT IS DEMOCRATIC, JUST, AND FREE.
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