NYT editorial calls polling place problems “unworthy of the world’s leading democracy”

by Whitney Norton

The New York Times published an editorial on Monday highlighting one of Election Protection’s main concerns: problems at polling places. Adam Cohen’s "No One Should Have to Stand in Line for 10 Hours to Vote" invites readers to "consider the experience of students at Kenyon College in Ohio in the 2004 election… Some students waited in line for 10 hours, and the last bleary-eyed voter did not cast a ballot until nearly 4 a.m." In this case, officials provided two machines for over a thousand voters. Election Protection saw these same issues across the country this primary season.

In an effort to help voters avoid these types of problems in November, Election Protection Legal Committees have been meeting with election officials in states across the country. These meetings are an effort to forestall some of the surprisingly simple (and solvable) situations mentioned in Cohen’s editorial:

Most of the logistical questions about voting are generally left up to local officials. Too often they don’t want to spend the money to provide enough machines, and fail to hire or properly train enough poll workers for a smooth process.

In addition to problems that occur due to poor planning and a lack of resources, Election Protection is working to educate voters about other more malicious issues pointed out by Cohen: "there have long been reports of elections administrators in college towns trying to suppress the ‘’out of town’’ student vote. There is a long, painful history of obstacles to black voting."

Concluding, Cohen discusses these issues on a national scale:

For the sake of the legitimacy of our elections, more voting disasters—long lines, confusing ballots or unreliable electronic voting machines—must be avoided. Congress should take the lead, but it has failed even to set standards for numbers of voting machines. This year, it failed to pass a good bill that would have made funds available to states to buy backup paper ballots.

... too little is being done to make sure that polling places can accommodate all of the voters who show up. That is a mistake. An election in which people have to wait 10 hours to vote, or in which black voters wait in the rain for hours, while white voters zip through polling places, is unworthy of the world’s leading democracy.

We couldn’t have said it better ourselves.

Click here to read Adam Cohen’s editorial.