Is a “Voting Rights Disaster” in the Offing?

This is the question taken up by Christopher Edley Jr. today in a Washington Post editorial. While most of us would like to see greater participation in the electoral process, Edley wonders if high turnout will cause the election infrastructure to buckle.

Suppose in your neighborhood there are 600 registered voters per machine, while across town there are only 120 per machine. (That’s a 5 to 1 disparity, which is what exists in some places in Virginia today.) On Election Day, your line wraps around the block and looks to be a four-hour wait, while in other areas lines are nonexistent.

This ought to be a crime. It amounts to a “time-tax” on your right to vote, and some of your neighbors will undoubtedly give up and go home. This scenario raises three questions: Nationwide, will it discourage tens of thousands, or untold millions? Which presidential candidate and down-ballot candidates might benefit from this “tax”? And what can be done in the next few days?

This piece brings up the issue of insufficient voting machines in economically distressed and largely minority neighborhoods without raising the bogyman of Republican shenanigans suppressing the Democratic vote. Instead, the focus is on some of the shortcomings in the Help America Vote act of 2002.

Disappointingly, Congress failed to create an explicit and easily enforceable prohibition against grossly disproportionate resource allocations between polling places in the same state or even the same county — the level of government at which, preposterously, we typically finance and administer elections. This localism means that the infrastructure of democracy vies for resources with potholes, parks, sheriffs and firefighting. It also means that locally powerful communities get better service on something that — above all else — is supposed to be scrupulously equal in this country.

It’s a bit late to worry about it now, though the author does recommend some fail-safe strategies such as making sure that paper ballots are available at all precincts and that they be made available as an option at any location where the wait time exceeds 45 minutes. For the future, though, should we see any serious breakdowns next week it may be time to take a fresh look at the HAVA and possibly come up with a way to ensure proper funding across the nation for the electoral infrastructure. At the same time, as we discussed yesterday regarding Georgia, we should also look at Federal law prohibiting states from doing massive voter roll purges without providing sufficient time for the improperly removed voter to challenge the finding. I think we’re doing better than eight years ago, but there is still a vast amount of room for improvement.