Why are there such long waits to vote in the US?

Question

Early voting has started in the US Presidential elections and one article that caught my eye today was regarding the waiting times to vote.

AOC criticises ‘unacceptable’ lines at New York polling stations after waiting two hours to cast ballot.

This doesn't appear to be solely an issue with early voting or the Covid Pandemic as FiveThirtyEight have documented wait time over an hour for 15% to 20% of votes and much longer for some.

Some people, like Donna Thompson, 59, told us that a long line or complicated voting system is something that’s just baked into the process for them. “I’m going to have to take time off work to go get in line, because my job doesn’t give me time off to vote,” she said, adding that she’s had to wait five or six hours in past elections.

Why are there such long waits? In the UK I don't think I've ever waited more than a handful of minutes and even news reports of queues are usually at closing time. In 2019 the Independent's article about long waits to vote in the general election covered experiences of 20 and 35 minutes.

Answer 1

There is no single answer to this question because in the United States, elections are run by local governments, most often at the county level, although state laws generally apply.

Three factors would seem to predominate:

Voter Suppression

In some instances, it's apparently a deliberate attempt to engineer vote suppression, e.g., Republican state officials decreeing in Texas that there only be one early voting location per county which disadvantages urban areas which tend to vote more Democratic.

Financial constraints

In most jurisdictions, the staff at polling places are effectively volunteers—they are paid, but the amount is little more than a token amount which results in the polling place staff being primarily retirees which is especially problematic this year with Covid-19 making the job dangerous for older people. Similarly, because funding is done at the local level where money is harder to come by, often the voting equipment is older and more prone to breakage.

Poor decision making

Some jurisdictions have purchased unreliable voting equipment that breaks down or is difficult to set up on election day—the more conspiracy-minded may see voter suppression in this as well, although I think a bigger role comes into play with the poorly-paid polling place workers who get minimal training and may not feel comfortable dealing with the technology surrounding electronic voting equipment.

Answer 2

I suppose I should start with a personal anecdote that helps illustrate where states sometimes get things wrong.

In 2000, I went to my polling place after work to vote. I was greeting by an insanely long line (I'd estimate 300-400 people) and it took about two hours to actually get to vote. When I got into the area where the line ended, it became clear why the line was so long: they had only 5 voting machines. These machines were quite odd, in that they required you to mash a button to vote for a candidate, and then press a large button to have your vote recorded. A poll worker would then have to reset the machine for the next voter.

Why did they only have 5 voting machines for that many people? Voting was heavy in 2000 (an unusually contentious year back then) and the county assigned machines based on the previous turnout for the same type of cycle. Apparently 5 machines were sufficient in 1996...

A lot of voter waiting happens because (at least prior to 2020) most people vote in-person. All states permit some form of absentee voting (which includes in-person absentee, a type of early voting), but most people have had little reason to get one, since it's harder to do that than to merely register and vote in-person. You also have the procrastinators who wait until the last minute, as well as those who probably forgot about the election entirely.

The bulk of the wait in the past has also been at check-in, where voter rolls had to be printed and manually checked. There's not an even distribution of last names by first letter, either, and check-in would take 20-30 seconds per voter. My local precinct has gone to an all-electronic check-in which drastically reduced wait times in that regard.

Another change they made in 2004 was going to a paper "bubble fill" ballot, which eliminated the need for voting machines. Dozens of voters can work at their ballots at the same time.

Still, you're not going to eliminate all waits unless there's a switch to all-mail balloting. Even the UK suffers from waiting in lines sometimes.

Answer 3

Early voting is not quite the same as Election Day voting. Throughout Election Day, there will be thousands upon thousands of polling stations open to limit the wait time for what is an otherwise massive event (in 2016, 79.3 million people voted on Election Day vs. 57.4 million before Election Day). The reason you're seeing incredibly long lines is due to the fact that there are more people voting early than ever before, and it's quite frankly astonishing just how many people have voted early (92 million and counting, 59 million by mail and 33 million in person votes).

As for early in person voter lines, there are two main reasons why they are so darn long this year in many places: Congress could not reach an agreement to bail out states. A large portion of the funding for election activities come from states. Since states were not bailed out, they have been forced to cut the budget of state agencies, including elections departments. As a result, there are fewer early in person voting places this year then there has been in the recent past. Couple this with the fact that some additional 10 million people have early in person this year to the already 24 million early in person voting strong and you have lines that look a lot longer.

As others have said, voter suppression might have something to do with it too, although this is not totally clear. Some states seem to be limiting the amount of already limited resources they are giving to large population centers which tend to lean Democrat in places like Texas or Wisconsin.