If you live in Florida, it can take you up to 35 minutes to cast your ballot on election day. It would take far longer than the 1.5 minutes you'd spend in Alaska.
The Government Accountability Office, which tallied the results of the average wait time to cast a ballot across 36 states during the 2012 election, said as much. Oregon and Washington do not participate since they vote via mail.
In contrast to Virginia, South Carolina, Maryland, and Florida, most states had to wait less than 20 minutes.
The wait times are based on nationwide voter surveys, though several states were left out because the data wasn't sufficient.
The 96 page GAO report delves much deeper than just waiting times and notes that since studying voting lines is still relatively new, future research will need to take a lot more measurements. In the study, various election administrators characterized the waiting period differently, which is one issue with the existing statistics. Additionally, this might lead to various reporting patterns in each state. The study's foundation was largely human reporting.
Voting is most efficient in the morning
Officials stated that wait times varied throughout the day in the GAO survey. The majority of ballots were cast in less than 10 minutes in the morning, which was generally the ideal time to vote; nevertheless, the window of time gradually grew longer during the day.
What causes are causing the voting process to lag?
The fact that voting places can be far apart from one another is one of the unexpected issues contributing to long lineups. As a result, a large crowd gathers at the nearby booth. However, less obvious problems are also important:
- Voters frequently spend a lot of time figuring out how to fill out the ballot, which can make the process scary.
- Poll workers who aren't properly trained.
- Poor booth design can make it challenging to complete the task quickly.
- Voting is restricted to one day, and there are no options to cast a ballot at other times.
Too few polling places for the midterm elections?
Despite the reduced turnout for midterms, shorter wait times are not always the result. There can be an equivalent wait time due to both the lower turnout and the reduced deployment of polling places.
Demographic disparities are another important factor in voter wait times. Longer lineups and a slower overall process were observed in more densely populated locations. According to NYU's Brennan Center for Justice, communities with a higher percentage of Latinos and African Americans frequently have much longer wait times.
African-Americans nationwide and Latinos in some counties had greater wait times in Maryland, South Carolina, and Florida, the states the study concentrated on. This was mostly because largely minority communities were not provided with voting equipment.
What are some potential remedies?
The Brennan Center for Justice recommended total renovation of the voting system in America in a separate research.
The following were suggested as potential improvements to voting efficiency.
- A more effective mechanism for voter registration.
- The number of early voting days should be increased.
- Reducing the dimensions of precincts.
- Ballots should be made shorter so they won't be confused.
- Making voter education simpler.
- The growing usage of voting machines that are electronic.
- Altering the layout of the polling booth to speed up traffic between different checkpoints.
At the moment, none of these recommendations have been put into action. But comparable changes have been effective in other significant democracies, like India, which recently extended its general elections across five weeks to ensure a secure and efficient process.
