Alarm Bells from Silenced Voters
by Isela Gutierrez and Bob Hall*
“I have voted at this library in every election, but today I was told to vote somewhere else. I’ve already waited in line for 30 minutes and I don’t know if I’ll get to vote today. I may not have time to get to the right precinct.” – Durham County voter at North Regional Library
“I am a veteran who has issues with being around a lot of people – I take medication to deal with it. I was sent to 3 different precincts to vote. The whole process took me 3 ½ hours and left me very anxious. I asked if I could go to the front of the line because of my anxiety, but was told I could not. I had to try very hard not to be ugly.” – Alamance County voter at South Melville precinct
This report builds on our earlier analysis1 of the impact of the major 2013 election law changes on- North Carolina voters during the 2014 general election. While most of the 2.9 million voters who cast ballots found the experience relatively easy, we called attention to situations that discouraged voter partic- ipation and damaged the integrity of the voting process.
The main problems included:
- Long lines and wait times made worse by the loss of straight-ticket voting and out-of precinct voting;
- Lack of preparation and insufficient number of staff, machines, and voting booths;
- Inconsistent distribution of provisional ballots, with wide variations between counties and even among precincts in a county;
- Problems related to inadequate parking, traffic control, poor signage and poor lighting; and
- Inadequate access and long waits for curbside voters.
Based on our analysis of elections data, 1,400 hotline calls and reports from more than 300 poll monitors, we concluded that the new voting limitations and polling- place problems reduced turnout by at least 30,000 voters in the 2014 election. We noted that North Carolina had the most expensive US Senate race in the nation in 2014, yet the turnout rate was only 44.4% of the state’s 6.6 million registered voters, a small gain over the 43.7% rate in the 2010 election. A one percent increase in the turnout rate for 2014 — to 45.4% — would have added 66,000 more votes.
Finally, we emphasized that the message from these silenced voters is more important than their exact count. Rather than wait for similar problems to disenfranchise an even larger number of voters in the 2016 presidential election, election officials and lawmakers must heed the warnings from 2014. They must invest in intensified voter education, larger staffs at polling centers, improved training of poll workers, more equipment, and better procedures to facilitate voter access.
In the months since our initial report, we have dug deeper into the data and the reports from our poll monitors. We analyzed turnout at precincts where problems were reported, interviewed scores of individual voters, and reviewed the coding of thousands of provisional ballots. In the process, we found:
- More than 2,300 voters who cast rejected provisional ballots would have had their votes count if the back- up provisions of same-day registration and out-of- precinct voting had still been in place.
- Many voters sent away to other precincts eventually managed to successfully cast a ballot, but this often required spending an hour or more at different voting locations.
- The 2014 Election Day turnout was significantly below the 2010 level at dozens of precincts where our poll monitors reported problems, suggesting that thousands of voters may have simply opted out altogether rather than wait in long lines, drive to another pre- cinct, or demand a provisional ballot.
In the next four sections, we examine different ways to help estimate the total number of the voters blocked by the changes in North Carolina’s election law. We also include some of the voices of voters and their stories. At the conclusion, we revisit the major message from their stories for election officials and policymakers.
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