[EL] do long lines occur more in black precincts?

[Charles Stewart III]

The Survey of the Performance of American Elections (SPAE), which I helped conduct in 2008, and which interviewed 200 voters in each state, had a question about average waiting time to vote.  The Cooperative Congressional Election Study (CCES), which Steve Ansolabehere at Harvard leads, has regularly had this question on it.  The CCES doesn't have a guaranteed floor of 200 observations in each state, but has more observations overall, because it's a nationally representative sample.

When I ran a simple correlation between the average waiting time, reflected in the SPAE, and the Peshkin data, there was a strong correlation between the two measures, at least at the state level (r = .58).

The "right" answer about whether it is possible to measure wait time and its relationship with race is "of course it's possible."  The best study would be complicated and expensive, involving independent observers gauging waiting times at scientifically selected polling locations.  It could be done, but would probably involve a study budget of hundreds of thousands of dollars.  I would be delighted if an impartial group (or groups) would be interested in funding such a study.  It won't happen in 2012, but could happen in the future.

Until then, there ARE a few surveys that have asked voters this question.  These surveys have the race of the voter and the mode of voting (election day, early, etc.)  Some of these surveys have ZIP code of the voter.  (None, as far as I know, has the actual precinct coded directly.)  This question is on the long list of empirical papers I'm hoping to write when this election is over.

Charles

===============================================================
Charles Stewart III
Kenan Sahin Distinguished Professor of Political Science
Housemaster of McCormick Hall

Voice:  617.253.3127 / Facsimile:  617.258.8546
e-mail:  cstewart at mit.edu / URL:  http://web.mit.edu/cstewart/www/

Department of Political Science
30 Wadsworth Street
Building E53-449
Cambridge, Massachusetts   02139

From: law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu [mailto:law-election-bounces at department-lists.uci.edu] On Behalf Of Michael Peshkin
Sent: Monday, October 22, 2012 11:38 AM
To: law-election at uci.edu
Subject: [EL] do long lines occur more in black precincts?

Back in '08 I published a study suggesting that long lines at polling places may especially afflict black voters.

Rick asked on this list "I'd be interested to hear from others if the methodology of this study is sound (especially in its reliance on news reports of long lines)."   After which I got pilloried.

Now we're again about to see news footage of those determined black voters in Ohio waiting in line for hours -- and nothing about the ones who went home to feed the kids.

Is it even possible to measure the wait time - vs - race statistics?   Are there practical yet methodologically sound sampling techniques?

Has anyone ever done it?   What do you guess they would find?

And would it matter?   Is the elasticity known, for turnout - vs - wait time?

--

Article: http://inthesetimes.com/article/4068/are_long_lines_the_new_poll_tax/

Graph: http://peshkin.mech.northwestern.edu/longlines/longlines-vs-black.pdf

Discussion on this list: http://mailman.lls.edu/pipermail/election-law/2008-December/date.html


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