[EL] My Latest--A Simple Solution to Long Voting Lines: 30 Minutes or Less

[Elias, Marc (Perkins Coie)]

A Simple Solution to Long Voting Lines: 30 Minutes or Less

February 23, 2021
By Marc Elias

When it comes to voting rights, Republicans claim to be misunderstood. They insist they are not trying to suppress the vote; they just want to make voting more secure. For Republicans that means promoting in-person voting.

Even though I vehemently disagree with Republicans’ undermining of vote by mail, I am all for expanding access to in-person voting. So, in the spirit of bipartisanship, I want to propose a legislative reform that meets Republicans’ stated objective of encouraging in-person voting. States should pass laws prohibiting long lines at the polls. Specifically, states should prescribe by law that no voter should have to wait more than half an hour in order to cast a ballot.

Here is how it would work. The new law would entitle voters to a wait time of 30 minutes or less when voting in person. If the state or a locality fails to meet this time limit, it must pay the affected voter for the time the voter spent waiting in line in excess of 30 minutes.

Voters could seek the actual cost to them of waiting in line (lost wages, childcare, etc.) or accept an hourly minimum that each state could set by law. If there was a dispute over the length of a wait or the cost of a voter’s time, it would be resolved in an expedited court proceeding. The state would owe the legal fees and costs of any prevailing voter plaintiff as well as the costs of the plaintiff’s own time in bringing the lawsuit.

Why 30 minutes? That was the time limit that the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration in 2014 announced<http://web.mit.edu/supportthevoter/www/files/2014/01/Amer-Voting-Exper-final-draft-01-09-14-508.pdf> should be the “general rule.” After studying the problem for months, it determined that “[a]ny wait time that exceeds this half-hour standard is an indication that something is amiss and that corrective measures should be deployed.”

Requiring election officials to pay when voters wait in long lines will have several benefits.

For one, it will provide some relief to those waiting in long lines to help defray the economic costs of voting in person. Money alone may not sufficiently compensate voters forced to choose between exercising their fundamental right to vote and providing for their family, but it may go a long way toward recognizing the burdens imposed on these voters. It will also give voters some sense of empowerment—the feeling that they no longer have to wait helplessly in long lines to vote without any recourse.

This system will also help us better understand the true cost and scope of the problem by putting a dollar value to it. Most importantly, it will incentivize states and localities to prevent long lines in the first place.

To be clear, long voting lines are not inevitable or unavoidable. They are the product of policy choices states and counties make as to whose time—and whose vote—is valuable and whose is not.

READ FULL ARTICLE: https://www.democracydocket.com/2021/02/30-minutes-or-less/

—
Marc Elias
Perkins Coie LLP
700 13th St, NW
Washington, DC 20005


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