With little less than a week until the 2008 presidential election, there is growing concern that several states are dangerously unprepared to meet the challenge of administering an election where voter turnout will likely reach unprecedented levels.
Advancement Project, an organization who works to protect voting integrity, has released a report that examines the probable impact the expected voter turnout will have on precinct polling operations in key battleground states on November 4th.
The study uncovered three major findings, concluding that:
- In many jurisdictions, the number of voting machines, privacy booths, and poll workers will likely be insufficient to accommodate all those who may turn out to vote on November 4, 2008. This will likely result in extremely long lines at the polls and “lost” voters unless these problems are addressed beforehand.
- Machines, privacy booths, and poll workers have been mis-allocated in many jurisdictions, which will likely result in some precincts within a jurisdiction having long lines due to insufficient resources while neighboring precincts have an efficient Election Day because they have been provided ample numbers of machines, privacy booths, and poll workers.
- In some jurisdictions, the allocation of polling place resources is likely to have a disproportionate impact on communities of color. In other words, there will be fewer voting machines or poll workers per voter in high minority precincts than in low minority precincts.
This report had this to say about the nature of the expected explosive vote turnout:
The allocation of polling place resources is of particular concern because fairly small increases in turnout at the precinct level can result in dramatically different wait times. For example, many of the jurisdictions profiled here have had barely enough machines, privacy booths, and poll workers to avoid extended wait times in previous elections using the same resources they are allocating for November. Many others have experienced long lines at the polls in previous elections with the same, or similar, resources. When additional voters are added in November, precincts that were previously relatively efficient could face extremely long lines, and precincts that already had experienced long lines could become overwhelmed.
An indicator of expected voter turnout
With such an explosive expected turnout on the horizon people are getting nervous that come election day their names will not be properly registered in their riding. Rock the Vote (a youth oriented program that aims to register young voters) has reportedly received approximately 2,200 e-mails from people they helped register to vote in New York, NY reporting their names missing were from registration rolls. More than 2.5 million people downloaded registration forms from the group’s Web site, which is just one of several non profit groups who launched full fledged voter registration programs this year.
Rock the Vote: If You Care promo
So what can you do to ensure that you’re information is accurate and accounted for on election day? Take a few minutes and verify your registration. If you’re unsure which county you reside in you can check NACo Data & Demographics, and from there you can verify that you are registered over at votepoke. Showing up at the last minute is naturally a bad idea, and be sure you don’t leave the voting booth until your vote has been correctly cast. If you find that your name HAS in fact been dropped, use NACo to find the number of your county representative and demand they fix the problem. Best of luck to everyone on November 4th, if you have any tips or updates on this issue please let us know below.
Data and maps can be downloaded as separate pdf files at this location.
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