On Queue

As I've previously written, one of the most effective ways to suppress voter turnout is to create long waiting lines at the polling place so that many potential voters will leave in frustration. This method has long been used to discourage voting in minority areas and around college campuses. It can be done by not having enough polling places or voting machines in heavily populated areas, or by creating procedural delays, such as requiring I.D. checks, but not having enough poll workers to carry out these operations efficiently.

This method of voter suppression is insidous for a couple of reasons. First, unlike other voter suppression efforts, it leaves no traces. There is no way to accurately count the number of discouraged voters. Secondly, the public often blames the victim and argues that if discouraged voters had only been more patient, there would have been no problem. Needless to say, this ignores the fact that many people have other obligations, such as work and child care, and cannot afford to spend hours in line at the polling place.

This problem is finally receiving some of the attention it deserves. The New York Times reports the results of a survey by political scientist Charles Stewart showing that blacks and Hispanics wait longer in line than whites. The survey was conducted over the internet by YouGov/Polimetrix. They contacted 10,200 people, 200 from each state and the District of Columbia, for a survey on “the quality of the voting experience.” The average self-reported wait time was 14 minutes. Here are the differences by race:

Race	Waiting time
White	12.7 minutes
Hispanic	20.2 minutes
Black	20.2 minutes

They also found significant differences by size of county, with people from larger counties—that is, urban areas—waiting longer. There were large differences by state, with Vermont having the shortest average wait time (2 minutes) and Florida the longest (45 minutes).

Is this a representative sample? YouGov/Polimetrix is a polling organization that is increasingly popular with social scientists. They provide opt-in internet survey panels. People volunteer to participate in internet surveys. They are notified by email when their participation is requested. For each completed survey, they receive points exchangeable for prizes such as movie tickets and gift cards. A recent study suggests that their results are as valid as more expensive telephone surveys, primarily because of recent declines in public willingness to participate in telephone surveys. While you might think that their volunteers would be higher in political interest than the average person, YouGov/Polimetrix actively recruits low interest respondents and can statistically weight its results to correct for this and other types of unrepresentativeness.

Another response to this survey might be, “They are lying.” That is, critics might speculate that African- and Hispanic-Americans deliberately exaggerate their wait times in order to claim the status of victims of discrimination. I doubt whether the wait time issue is sufficiently politicized to produce this type of bias, but if it is, you could claim that whites might also exaggerate their wait times in order to deny that they are beneficiaries of discrimination.

The Stewart study focuses attention of Florida, whose average wait time was 11 minutes longer than the second worst location, D. C. The Orlando Sentinal recently commissioned an engineering professor, Ted Allen, to estimate the number of Floridians who left without voting on Election Day, 2012. Dr. Allen has developed a mathematical model which predicts turnout suppression from parameters such as number of registered voters, number of voting machines, ballot length, etc. It was originally developed to measure voter suppression near the Ohio State campus in 2004. Although the model is too mathematically complex for me to understand, it is published in peer-reviewed journals.

One of Allen's more important discoveries is that you can predict turnout suppression from the number of hours the polls have to stay open after closing time. For each additional hour the polls stay open, turnout is suppressed by about 4.8%. This allows you to estimate the number of discouraged voters in each precinct. If you then assume that the discouraged voters would have voted for the candidates in the same proportion as those who actually voted at that location, you can estimate the number of votes lost by each candidate.

Based on the sample of precincts he analyzed, Allen estimated that 201,000 Floridians left in frustration on Election Day, which is 2.3% of the number of votes cast. He predicts that 108,000 of these votes would have gone to Obama and 93,000 to Romney, so Obama's margin of victory would have been 15,000 votes greater had these people voted. Obama carried the state by 74,309 votes.

There are many remedies for long waiting lines, including making Election Day a holiday, expanding early voting times, and ensuring that the number of polling places is proportional to the population. It is outrageous that, in many states, one party controls voting procedures and manipulates them to serve their interests. There is speculation that President Obama will call for voting reform in the State of the Union address. However, as long as Republicans continue to benefit from voter suppression, it is unlikely that reform legislation will get through our gridlocked Congress.