Given the current kerfuffle over voting locations for the primary runoffs in Harris County, I thought this story from Dallas was of interest.
More than three dozen Dallas County voting sites that were used last month won’t open for elections in May and June in an attempt to cut down on problems atpolling places.
Dallas County commissioners voted Wednesday to keep 39 schools, churches and recreation centers closed to reduce the number of poll workers needed and to consolidate resources. Polling locations around the county during the March 1 primary saw long lines and technical issues that were exacerbated by poll workers who never showed up.
Kristy Noble, Dallas County Democratic Party Chair, told commissioners that officials were scrambling to find people even on Election Day to work at voting sites after 71 election judges dropped out two days earlier.
County Commissioner John Wiley Price said he heard of wait times of up to four hours to vote in DeSoto.
County Elections Administrator Michael Scarpello said some delays stemmed from poll workers not knowing how to use ADA-compliant voting machines.
The revised polling locations would be in effect for local city council and school board races on May 7, statewide Democratic and Republican primary runoff elections in May 24, and for potential runoffs for the local races in June.
Scarpello said sites on the chopping block included those with low voter turnout or places within half a mile of other polling places. Republican and Democratic officials as well as city secretaries and Independent School District officials around the county were among those consulted beforehand, he said.
According to the county, there were around 460 voting centers open on Election Day in March. There were 67 locations that saw less than 100 voters cast ballots.
Scarpello said a plan is in the works to boost financial incentives for county workers to work at polling locations.
Commissioner Elba Garcia also mentioned a possible partnership with Dallas College to allow students to get paid and earn school credit to work at voting sites.
But concerns remain about how the county would properly communicate the changes to the public.
Voters have been allowed to cast ballots at any polling place in the county since 2019, but many still believe they’re still restricted to voting at their neighborhood precinct location, Scarpello said.
“We need to do a better job of saying, ‘you can vote anywhere, anytime’ and here’s how you find out about which locations,” he said.
See here for the Harris County issue. There are a lot of factors at play here, but one that stands out to me is that we’ve only been doing voting centers on Election Day for a few years now – some places have done it longer than others – and it seems there may be a lack of data about where people are actually voting, and where they might choose to vote if they fully understood their options. We’ve had early voting with vote-anywhere locations for 20+ years now, and I think people understand that, but they may not have internalized the idea that voting centers on Election Day means they can do the same. There may also be some behavioral differences for when Election Day is on a Tuesday, a day when most people work and may find it more convenient to vote near their place of employment, versus Saturday when most people don’t work and may prefer to vote closer to home. What I’m saying is, the larger counties ought to spend some time studying this, to see how they can do better, to provide a sufficient number of voting locations in places that make the most sense.
Getting enough election workers is mostly a matter of money, but a little creativity in the search for workers couldn’t hurt. College students, even high school seniors, should be tapped as a potential resource, with the understanding that they too would need to be adequately compensated. More robust protection against threats from violent (let’s be honest, right-wing) fringes would help across the board. There are a lot of things the counties can do to improve this experience, even after all of the vote-suppressive legislation we’ve had to endure. It has to be a priority for it to happen.