If you care about democracy, you should care about long lines at polling places
Early voting started in Georgia this week, and some voters (like the one below) waited in line almost 10 hours to vote. Some, including Dan Rather and former senator Claire McCaskill called the long lines evidence of voter suppression. But commentators quickly shot back, saying that it’s no big deal because “they still get to vote once they make it through the line” and “we wait in lines all the time,” and if “they really wanted to vote they could have requested to vote absentee.”
Making people wait in line for hours to vote should be a big deal to every American who cares about our country’s democracy functioning. Here’s why:
1. Americans’ commitment to voting is outpacing our election infrastructure
Long lines signals more voters than systems can accommodate. Georgia and Harris County, Texas shattered records for the first day of early voting. Voters determined to have their voice heard patiently waited, sometimes all through the day and well into the night, until they were able to vote. That’s commitment to this country.
It also shows our collective commitment to funding local election officials lags behind our voters’ commitment to show up and participate. Local officials have struggled for years to fund the equipment and workers they need to run elections well.
Extra precautions for COVID-19 have worsened the situation, and government officials, especially at the national level, did not step in to ensure that all eligible Americans can easily vote. So starved are local election officials of needed resources that they are turning to private funders for help. Our collective funding for elections in future should demonstrate as much commitment (not to mention grit, perseverance, and sacrifice) as voters have demonstrated this week.
2. Excusing long lines treats voting like a frivolous privilege, not a hard-won right.
Defenses of long lines to cast a vote tell us how these defenders view voting. “I wait in line to see a sports game or a concert, so why can’t other people wait in line to vote?” Makes perfect sense, if you think that voting is on par with entertainment or recreation — a choice (or luxury) that only a tiny percentage of Americans should participate in. But if you think voting is a right and a duty of every American, then long lines are worrisome. And treating democratic participation and having a vote and a voice like an optional concert is even more so.
A right is something everyone should be able to exercise without jumping through hoops. If voting is a right, you should be able to vote even if you can’t get a babysitter for 10 hours, or get an entire day off work, or abandon your myriad other responsibilities from dawn until dusk. Guess what happens when people realize they have to make a choice between voting and everything else they do during a 10-hour day? They stop trying. For every additional hour a voter waits in line to vote, their probability of voting in the next election drops by 1 percentage point.
Voting is more important than going to a fancy brunch restaurant, and we should act like it.
3. If lines are long, they are longer for Black voters.
Saying “we all wait in lines all the time” doesn’t only equate voting with going to the hot new donut shop, it pretends that voters of different races share the same experiences when they cast their ballots. And unfortunately, as with many things related to voting in the U.S., long lines aren’t an equal barrier. They are worse for Black voters. For two neighborhoods in the same town, the less white neighborhood is likely to have longer lines.
We can’t just wave our hands and say “lines, no big deal,” when those lines are more disadvantageous to voters of color.
Longer lines in majority-Black neighborhoods became common-place in Georgia after the Supreme Court gutted voting rights protections in 2013. Georgia responded to the lack of federal protections by closing hundreds of polling places, leaving long lines at the ones that remained. The longest lines are in majority-nonwhite neighborhoods.
If we took long lines seriously — as a significant obstacle to voting and even a tool for disenfranchisement — and treated all Americans as if they have the right to vote, we’d make sure every eligible voter could cast their ballot without jumping through difficult and unnecessary hoops.
4. We can do better. We know exactly how to make voting work.
If there were some law of nature that said people can’t vote without 10 hour lines, perhaps we would need to accept our fate. But it doesn’t have to be this way. It’s great that voters in Georgia and Texas are so committed, but they shouldn’t have to be. Registering to vote, updating your registration, showing up at the right polling place at the right time and voting should be enough. We don’t need to add on a 10 hour wait to make sure voters really mean it.
And we don’t even have to look to New Zealand or Scandinavia or elsewhere to know exactly how to do this better. Many states have figured out this whole voting rights thing. From making it easy to get registered and stay registered, to keeping voter lists clean, to making it convenient to vote, we already know how to do this. We just have to convince more lawmakers that voting is a right for all Americans, not a test of endurance and dedication for many or a frivolous privilege to be enjoyed by a few.
Find out more about my work on democracy solutions here.
