Waiting to vote: the effect of administrative irregularities at polling locations and voter confidence

ABSTRACT

When citizens experience an irregularity while voting, their confidence in elections is diminished, and they are more likely to perceive the results of the election as illegitimate. Although there are many irregularities that a voter may experience, this article evaluates the consequence of extensive wait times to vote on citizen confidence in the United States. Utilizing the 2008–2016 Survey on the Performance of American Elections (SPAE) the analysis finds that wait times have a negative effect on confidence as do challenges with the voting equipment and voter registration. The effect of negative experiences extends beyond lowered confidence that a voter’s ballot is counted as intended to lower confidence that ballots at the local, state, and national level are counted as intended by voters as well. While extended wait times have a limited effect, negatively effecting the confidence in a voter’s personal ballot and ballots across the local jurisdiction, negative experiences with registration or ballots and voting equipment affect evaluations of confidence at the personal level and across the local jurisdiction, state, and nation.

KEYWORDS:

• Confidence
• election administration
• democracy
• integrity
• wait time

Notes on contributor

Bridgett A. King is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and Director of the Master of Public Administration Program at Auburn University. She teaches undergraduate courses in state policy and governance and graduate courses in policy analysis and diversity in public administration. She is also an instructor in the Election Center Certified Elections/Registration Administrator (CERA) Program. Her primary research interests include election administration, public policy, citizen voting experiences, and race and ethnicity.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

ORCID

Bridgett A. King http://orcid.org/0000-0002-6562-0126

Notes

1 Voter turnout rivaled that of a presidential election. There were more than 260,000 ballots cast in-person on Election Day and more than 1.1 million early votes cast during the 2018 midterm election. Turnout in the 2016 presidential election was 1,608,875 (Maricopa County Recorder 2016, 2018).

2 An estimated 200,000 people did not vote in 2014 because of the lines they encountered in 2012 (Pettigrew 2016).

3 A nationwide SPAE was not conducted in 2010 and thus is not included in the analysis.

4 Although included in the models the state fixed effects are not presented.

5 Data from the 2013 Cooperative Congressional Election Survey-MIT Module, suggests that the typical American places the threshold of acceptable wait time to vote between 30 and 60 min (Pettigrew 2016).

6 Following the presidential election in 2000, the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) was passed in 2002. HAVA provided states with limited administrative clarity regarding accessibility to provisional ballots across the 50 states. HAVA mandated that, a potential voter has the right to utilize a provisional ballot in the event their name does not appear on the registration list or the voter’s eligibility is challenged by an election official (Section 302 of the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) (42 U.S.C. §15482)).

7 Many jurisdictions use paper poll books that contain a list of eligible voters. These books have to be printed before each election and delivered to individual voting sites/polling locations. Electronic poll books or e-poll books are electronic version of the traditional poll book that often come in the form of a laptop or tablet.

8 For example, voters may share their experiences on social media. A tween from the 2016 presidential election demonstrates this point. The tweet reads, “The voting machine in Oakland is broken, so we put our ballots in a box, which falls open exposing the ballots #yourtaxdollarsatwork.” November 8, 2016, 8:22 AM. Tweet. The tweet and accompanying photograph were subsequently reported by national news outlets (See Brewster 2016).

9 The 2008 election is not included in the analysis; questions regarding confidence at the local, state, and federal level were not included until 2012.

10 As an exception there is a slight increase in the effect problems with the equipment or ballot, when moving from personal to local levels of confidence.

11 King (2017) for example uses data from the 2012 election and Atkeson and Saunders (2007) utilize data from the 2006 midterm election.

12 Because racial/ethnic minorities are more likely to experience each individual irregularity and black was significant in the local and state models reported in Table 3, models that include black * irregularity interactions were generated to determine if the effect of irregularities on confidence for African American voters was different compared to white voters. The models suggest that while racial and ethnic minorities may be more likely to experience irregularities, the effect on confidence is not unique (For Models See Appendix B and C).

13 Stewart (2018) finds that following the 2014 midterm election, Republican victories in federal and state elections nationwide were followed by a 14-point increase in Republican confidence and a slight decrease in confidence among Democrats.

14 Famighetti, Melillo, and Perez (2014) found that during the 2012 presidential election, polling locations that had more voters (those who had not voted early or absentee) per machine and more voters per poll worker experienced longer Election Day delays than those that had a lower number of voter per poll worker and machine.

15 Of voters who report waiting more than 30 min, 72 percent report that the wait occurred before check in with 14.6 percent reporting the wait occurred while waiting for the voting machine.

16 “E-poll books allow poll workers to look up voters across the entire county or state. This can reduce time spent checking in votes. E-poll books also allow poll workers to easily direct voters to the correct polling place if they are at the wrong one, scan a driver’s license to pull up a voter’s information, avoiding data entry errors, notify a poll worker if a voter has already voted early” (National Conference of State Legislatures 2017).

17 The election assistance commission also provided states with the opportunity to request that the funds be used for categories other than those specified above (Election Assistance Commission 2018).

18 In the 2016 election, 2.08 percent or 2.8 million voters had registration problems. In the same election year, 1.77 percent or 2.45 million voters had problems with the ballot or voting equipment (Stewart 2017).

19 For example, there are resources accessible to some voters in the United States that allow them to track the location of their absentee ballot. As an example ballottrax in Arapahoe County, Colorado and Ballot Tracking, Reporting, and Communication Engine (TRACE) in Denver, Colorado. A similar resource exists in Estonia. Voters have access to a tool that allows them to track their ballot, verify that it was received, see how the vote was recorded, and verify that it is correct.