The Roosevelt Institution
Center on Voting Reform
http://rooseveltinstitution.org/kenyon/vote
The Longest Lines: An Unsettled Crisis in Our Voting System
In the 2004 Presidential election, many eligible voters were unable to vote. Reasons for this were extensive: voters were intimidated through threats, deception, misleading news, health concerns, fraud, and, most alarmingly, excessively long voting lines.
On November 2nd, 2004, the small college town of Gambier, Ohio made history. Voters there stood in line for up to thirteen hours in the rain, inside a hot gymnasium, and through crowded narrow hallways, until they finally cast their ballots in the early morning hours of November 3rd. Notwithstanding some initial outrage and anger, little has been done to ameliorate these flaws in our electoral system.
Long lines infringe unreasonably upon the private lives of voters. Any voter with financial obligations, family commitments, scheduling necessities, or a host of other responsibilities, cannot possibly endure such taxing circumstances. People with special needs also carry considerable burdens with long lines. Whether one is elderly, ill, hungry, fatigued, or has medical requirements, such arduous waiting is unreasonable and potentially dangerous.
Long lines also encourage demoralization, deception, and fraud. First, overcrowded polls discourage voters, inclining them not to participate. Second, speculative information about election results (news, both false and true, and exit polls) illegally inundates lines, deceiving and disenfranchising voters. Such news leaks often result in the implication that further votes are unimportant, and that Americans participating in their civic duty should simply go home. Third, long lines heavily augment the use of provisional ballots, creating mass confusion that befuddles the counting process.
In order to address the dilemma however, we must look to what caused such long lines in the first place. In Gambier, there were 1300 registered voters, but only two voting machines allocated, one of which even broke down for a few hours. In the whole of Knox County, where Gambier is located, there were only 112 voting machines allocated. This created an average of 330 registered voters per one machine, while the current “responsible” standard, as defined by the Ohio state legislature, is 175 voters per every one voting machine.
Our goal is to determine conclusively what “responsible” voter machine allocation is, and then to promote this accountable standard into law. In order to accomplish this goal, we seek to hold a committee hearing before Congress, create substantial dialogue on the topic, and raise awareness about voter machine allocation. Responsible machine allocation will reduce fraud, diminish the unnecessary inconveniences of voting, abate the devastation of machine breakdowns, and reduce the opportunity for misleading information to sway results.
We support quotas or mandates for a responsible number of allocated voting machines so that all Americans can conduct their civic duty freely and with integrity. We have met with members of two different congressional committees, spoken publicly with senators, and have garnered bipartisan support for this measure of reform. It is our sincere hope that our panel of researchers and experts will soon illuminate this issue before the United States House of Representatives and Senate, ensuring just democracy, and resurging the civic passion that exists within the American heart.
-Matthew Segal
National Challenge Coordinator
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Group members:
Matthew Segal
Norm Kaufmann
T Au
Jarrett A Moreno
William Okeefe
Sarah A Pfeifer
Christopher J Tucker