Check out our very own Neil posting on John Edwards blog about waiting lines. No, not the type you hear about for elective procedures in Canada, but the type you get when minorities want to vote in America. "People were lining up to vote before the polls opened," he writes, "and some of them were standing in that line for more than two hours. Some folks left before making it all the way through the line, because they had to go to work. Others people saw the line, despaired of ever making it through, and left."
I've never been convinced by the evidence on voter fraud in the 2004 election (my conclusion was there was some, but not enough to shift the result). I'm damn well convinced, though, that the inadequate supply of voting equipment for poor, largely black areas created hassles huge enough to, yes, throw the election. No one should have to wait hours to vote. Nor can they be expected to, particularly on a workday. It's a backhanded way to disenfranchise the poor and the voiceless, and it stinks, and it works. Neil notes that his father never waited more than 15 minutes in his middle class neighborhood, I'd love to see a study, if one's ever been done, of average wait times by income bracket. I think it would clarify quite a bit.
Voting lines, by the way, are one of the main reasons I've begun to come around on vote-by-mail set-ups.
