"If this election had been much closer, the outcry over the problems enumerated would be huge."

Tova Andrea Wang, Common Cause

Polling place lines

Much has been made of the fact that there was no catastrophic meltdown in the election system this year. The fact that problems were not as pervasive as they might have been is due to the hard work of the voting rights community and election administrators in the months and even years before the election and the enthusiasm and persistence of voters. At the same time, thousands and thousands of voters faced unacceptable barriers to voting this year, demonstrating that much more work remains to be done.

Long Lines

While we are proud of the historic turnout on Election Day, the amount of time some Americans had to wait in order to vote was not just unfortunate, it could have denied the right to cast a ballot for many voters. While in many precincts, voting took only a matter of minutes, in Detroit, some had to wait in line for five hours. In the St. Louis area it was six hours. In Chesapeake, VA, seven hours. Voters in Georgia and Florida faced unacceptably long wait times during early voting. While the commitment of so many to wait no matter how long it took was inspiring, some voters inevitably could not wait that long -- they worked for hourly wages, couldn't get that much time off or had child care responsibilities.

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