“This is like gridlock on the 405.” A resilient voter in Los Angeles County expressed this sentiment, comparing the voting experience to driving on the nation’s busiest Interstate Highway, as he stood in line to vote in the March 3, 2020, Super Tuesday, Primary Elections. According to the major newspaper where the quote appeared, the voter had spent the day driving to various voting centers to gage the fastest place to cast a ballot. After spending an hour and a half in line at the chosen polling location, the voter was informed that it would take an additional two and a half hours to get to the front of the line.   

Considering what occurred in Los Angeles County, the long line phenomenon experienced by voters on Election Day in Harris County’s Democratic Party Primary the same year is not unique nor is it exclusive to one jurisdiction. Typically, long lines of voters form at some polling locations in the conduct of an election at the end of the workday as voters head to the polls. In the 2008 historic primary contest between Senator Barack Obama and Senator Hillary Clinton, Texans who arrived at the voting center and got in line on time were casting ballots past 7 pm. Similarly, in 2016, helicopter aerial shots of a line of voters waiting to cast ballots at a Houston community center in the heart of a Hispanic neighborhood were transmitted on the 10 o’clock newscast nearly three hours after the polls had officially closed.

Not understanding how the Primary Election Day infrastructure is established, in each instance that voters encountered long lines people were quick to point fingers via all communication platforms. In Texas, Primary elections are functions of the major political parties. The County is contracted by the parties to conduct their election. The election code provides the executive committee of each political party the last word on how a Primary election is conducted, from the number of polling locations opened, where the polls are stationed to designating the clerks who run the polls on Election Day. In Harris County, each County Commissioner has a point person in their office whose job is to work with the elections department to review those important aspects of the election infrastructure.

Anybody who questions the integrity of elections should know that most election administrators are genuinely committed to making the voting experience more convenient for all voters. And even when they are not, election administrators in major jurisdictions are cognizant that they are continuously under the surveillance of the media, the governing authority, and what seems like every major voter advocacy group in existence. This ensures groups covered by the Federal Voting Rights Act are afforded equal access to the voting process. In short, there are checks and balances inherent in the administration of elections.

In Harris County, in 2019, a Countywide Polling Place Program (Voting Centers) enabling qualified Harris County citizens to vote at any one polling location on Election Day was successfully introduced. The impact of the Countywide Polling Place Program was most evident at Texas Southern University (TSU) in 2020 on Primary election night. TSU is located in Harris County‘s Commissioner Precinct One. Held by an African American since 1985, Precinct One is one of four single-member districts of the five member governing authority of the County. At the last minute, citizens rushed to vote at the well known historically Black college and other familiar locations within Precinct One resulting in a long lines of voters. The occurrence trended nationally on social media. However, the media ignored the Countywide Polling Place Program’s capacity to enfranchise voters. It painted a negative picture of an election night nightmare. But, if not for the countywide polling place program, there is a high probability that the majority of citizens who rushed to vote at the TSU polling location and other location in minority communities may not have been able to cast a countable ballot. By law, under the voting precinct based Election Day voting infrastructure that was in place before 2019, if these last minute voters were not registered to vote in the precinct where TSU is located, they would have been required to vote at their home voting precinct or cast a provisional ballot. And, by law, under a precinct based voting system, provisional ballots do not count if cast outside a voter’s designated Election Day polling location.

According to the 2020 March Primaries unofficial voter records, forty-eight percent of the last minute voters (eligible to vote but processed after 7 pm) on Election Day cast ballots at polling locations like TSU within Harris County Commissioner Precinct One. Voting data also shows that a significant portion of Election Day voters opted to vote at polling locations like TSU that also served as polls during the early voting period. In the Democratic Primary Election, there were four-hundred-and-one Voting Centers. Yet, almost a quarter of the Election Day voters cast their ballots at the 52 Voting Centers that serve as early voting sites. Similarly, in the Republican Primary Election, 21 percent of the Election Day voters cast their ballots at Voting Centers that also served as early voting sites.

The voter data may provide a possible explanation for the long lines at the TSU polling location on Election Day. But, it does not absolve anyone from the responsibility to alleviate lingering challenges that vex administrators of elections and the political parties Primary directors during the conduct of Primary Elections in Texas. The Countywide Polling Place Program is not a cure-all. However, there are steps that may be implemented by election official to maximize the potential of voting centers and simultaneously address the challenge of gridlock at the polls: 1) Data may be employed to ensure the allocation of polling stations and voting equipment is consistent with voting trends; 2) More resources may be devoted to educate citizens about their voting options on Election Day; 3) Citizens can be encouraged to take advantage of mail or early voting; and, 4) election officials can enhance efforts to work with the major political parties and the governing authority of the county to select enough well-placed ADA compliant voting locations and 5) recruit more technologically savvy poll workers to ensure voters at the polls are processed more efficiently.

In Harris County, leading into the 2020 elections, the chief election official listened to the public concerns and worked with stakeholders to do all possible within the bounds of state and federal laws to improve the voting process. Still, to mitigate the issue of long lines at the polls, the cooperation of voters is essential. It is incumbent upon all citizens to prepare and exercise the right to vote in a more informed and planned manner. Why? Consider the epiphany the voter in Los Angeles had about the similarity between freeway traffic and the voting process. Mainly, waiting to vote until the afternoon on Election Day is like working in downtown Houston and living in the outskirts of the city, beyond the Sam Houston Parkway (Beltway 8), and expecting to get home in 30 minutes driving down Highway 59, the eighth busiest highway in the nation (US Department of Transportation). There are days when the traffic moves well on the freeway but the bottlenecks that occur where it intersects with Interstate 45, the twelfth busiest highway in the nation and the 610 Loop West, the nineteenth busiest, make the commute home a long protracted endeavor. Aside from organic bottlenecks on Hwy 59, some days commuters are bound to hit roadblocks caused by stalled vehicles, accidents or construction. And, on other days, traffic will just be slow because too many commuters choose the same route to get to their destination.

The frustration one may feel when stuck in a traffic jam on the freeway or a long line at a poll is understandable. And, whether on the freeway or at a polling location, the average Joe or Jane has a right to express exasperation. But, stakeholders should not lose their heads and overreact. They should work constructively with election officials to address the challenge of gridlock at the polls and better understand other perceived issues. They should be cognizant that politicizing the long lines of voters may affirm citizens’ existing negative views about voting and make it even more difficult to increase voter participation. It is imperative leaders understand that legitimizing ill informed statements about the voting process, no matter how well-intentioned, may undermine the public’s confidence in election officials capacity to conduct an election.

In short, the experiences citizens have as commuters and voters suggest that no matter how many lanes one builds to widen a highway or how many polls and voting machines are available, in some instances, a confluence of expected and unexpected man made circumstances will increase the number of vehicles in a lane and the number of voters in a line. That is to say, in the end, in any major city, gridlock at polling locations during the conduct of a major Election may simply be a consequence of many citizens choosing to vote at the same time and at the same place when the voter traffic is at its heaviest.

[Hector de León has spent his professional life devoted to increasing voter participation. He spent 15 years working via community organizations to increase Latino empowerment by helping thousands of Legal Permanent Residents obtain US citizenship and incorporate them into the electoral process; As an employee of Harris County, Hector helped establish the County’s Language Assistance Program spending 15 years leading the effort to provide minorities covered by the Voting Rights Act the information and assistance needed to access the voting process. Hector served as an Elections Officials in Harris County, TX since 2004.]