With a shortened window for early voting before the election, some voters endured a six-hour wait to cast their ballot. Voters in swing states Florida and Virginia faced intimidating lines on election day as well, including areas with strong turnout. According to a Hart Research poll sponsored by AFL-CIO, minorities and Democrats were more likely to experience these challenges than Republicans, with 16 percent of Obama voters waiting 30 minutes or more compared to 9 percent of Romney voters. African-Americans and Hispanics were the likeliest to experience longer lines, at 22 percent and 24 percent respectively. In 2008, African-Americans waited twice as long as white voters, according to an MIT survey.
In addition to cutting back early voting, other ways to guarantee long waits are piling on BS referenda to bloat the ballot, deliberately understaffing polling places to low things down, and deliberately creating a shortage of voting machines to slow things even further. Additionally, you can short locations on ballots, forcing voters to wait while more are printed, and have “observers” ready at polling places to challenge as many ballots as possible — usually without real cause — also slowing everything down.
The enemies of democracy at the enemies of freedom. The people responsible for creating these long lines for political gain are not patriots, they aren’t lovers of freedom, they’re just anti-American pricks.
