Surely a pure coincidence that these extra long lines were encountered only in black neighborhoods of red states.
To my Republican friends that support the policies that led to this: MLK would be so proud of you.
Link: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/articles/news/politics/election-2020/2020/03/04/362610/its-worth-it-the-last-person-in-line-at-tsu-waited-six-hours-to-vote-on-super-tuesday/?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_term=nprnews&utm_campaign=npr&fb
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Anymore totally unrelated topics we need to address?
when you foam over Trump misdrawing a weather map.
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1: The actual number of sites and the resources that go to each are decided by the State. Here's info on the number of sites TX has closed lately.
You are correct that local mistakes were made and that local officials are in charge...but they can only do so much with the resources provided by the State. Are you implying that local polling locations have taxing authority and can purchase additional machines?
2. The Republican party denied a request to have a joint primary and 1 line instead of 2 (with the other unused), which exacerbated the problem.
Local screw ups can and will happen on both sides of the aisle, but TX Republicans have set up a system designed to make it harder for people of color to vote. There is no denying that.
Link: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/02/texas-polling-sites-closures-voting
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I am curious, though. What makes you think the GOP controls polling places in predominantly Democrat areas? I suspect they have a very hard time getting GOP representatives to work at these polling places.
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I, for one, have little confidence that my vote is always counted. Who knows where it goes once it become digital. Very easy to manipulate digital data.
I think there is far more chicanery going on behind the scenes with pre-loaded machines and pre-stuffed ballot boxes, especially in districts that have a problem getting members of the other party to work polls, like urban polling places.
I may volunteer this time around, though to see what goes on behind the scenes.
My understanding is the number of machines that goes to each district is determined by the State. The District manager then decides how to allocate them at the site. Here the district manager in question allocated them 50/50 to Dems and Republicans, which was obviously not smart. The reason they did that though is the Republicans denied a request for a joint primary (which would have done away with the 2 separate lines) since all machines were programmed the same way. The end result was no line on the Republican side with most of those machines unused and a 6 hour wait on the Dem side.
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The University of Texas also had long lines.
Sounds like this guy should not have gone to a university as his third choice of a place to vote. Maybe he should have just stayed in line at his assigned polling place.
Also, I found an article talking about this guy, and the reasons offered (by liberal sources) were several:
- accidental disabling of machines assigned there
- 11 people, including election judges, did not report to work...coronavirus fears expected. (Per the Austin American-Statesman: "Travis County had 164 vacancies after using up all of its emergency backup workers." The article stated that workers were abandoning their posts because there were not enough people to work the polling places because of the no-shows due to coronavirus fears. Interestingly, they reported that nearby rural counties (relatively speaking) had a full complements of workers. Maybe virus fears are worse in the cities.)
- "busy polling places had too few machines"...the example given? Polling places at grocery stores have been set up for convenience, but with very few machines intentionally. They mentioned that grocery store customers seemed not to mind the lines because they don't have to go find their polling place. They didn't mention targeting blue areas.
The American-Statesman is a liberal rag. I think they would have mentioned the problem you mentioned if it existed.
I expect to be bored out of my wits for an entire day, but maybe they will have me do something interesting.
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...and the 6 hr wait was at a historic black college in a former Jim Crow state. Surely you can see how these things are different
Madeleine Pelzel wasn't expecting the long line at TSU. She was at a different polling location where the wait was projected to be two hours when she checked the Harris County Clerk's website for information on wait times at other polling places.
Harris County recently transitioned to a voting center model from a precinct-based system, which assigned each voter to a certain precinct. That meant Pelzel could vote at any polling place in Harris County, so when she saw the green check mark over TSU on the website indicating there was little to no wait, she hopped on her bike and cycled over.
Pelzel told BuzzFeed News she reached TSU at around 5:30 p.m., where, contrary to what the county website said, there was a long line out the door. Hundreds of people had already been waiting hours to vote.
And like her, many others had seen the short wait time for TSU on the Harris County Clerk's website and driven over. Voters continued to pour in as the lines grew longer.
Tweet: Harris County, THIS is voter suppression. Call. Make a formal complaint. This is entirely unnecessary. It’s 2020.
So, apparently the Dems are being accused of voter suppression, not the Republicans, which is the opposite of what you posted, DRO.
"So many people had been in other lines, so many people had not gone to their more local voting location because they thought there might be a line," Pelzel said. "People were driving [to TSU] from actually quite far away, like over 30 minutes."
Counties adopting the voting center model are allowed to cut down on the number of polling places they run, the Guardian reported, a change that may have contributed to the long lines in Harris County. The county clerk's office did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
At around 8 p.m., election clerks brought in more voting machines. It took an hour to set up, Pelzel recalled, during which no one was allowed to vote.
Pelzel said she ended up waiting until 9:15 p.m. to finally cast her ballot.
Francesca Ervin also went to TSU after she heard that there was a shorter wait there. But by the time she got in line, Ervin told BuzzFeed News, "I was kicking myself."
...
Five hours later, she got to the front of the line. By then, there were only three or four election clerks there to assist voters.
"This is definitely my worst voting experience," Ervin said.
Link: https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/clarissajanlim/texas-harris-county-polls-super-tuesday-voters
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I was just reminded of Frank and Irish 64 pushing the "Melania was an escort" story. I didn't think they were the same poster, but it is interesting that both pushed that fake news within a week or so of each other. I'm sure they are outraged when others do it, however.
Per the Times: "Some voters stood in lines for hours. But despite voter suppression concerns, the primary breakdowns apparently reflected snafus more than malign intent."
Further: "Some critics complained on Twitter and elsewhere that the delays amounted to voter suppression in a state where Republicans have been frequently sued, sometimes successfully, for trying to minimize Democratic power. But Texas elections are tightly controlled by local officials, not state ones. And in big cities like Houston and Austin which had the biggest problems on Tuesday, those officials are Democrats with scant reason to depress turnout in Democratic urban strongholds."
Texas is Red so BAD outcomes were deliberate malfeasance by corrupt state officials!
California is Blue so BAD outcomes were minor technical difficulties.
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They would crawl over broken glass to vote against Orange. Me too.