Primary elections were in Texas yesterday and I can see more than ever the need for removing barriers for people to vote. A few headaches from my own experience:
- Everyone I talked to waited one-two hours in line, no matter what time of day they tried to go
- The online site that showed polling location times was not always up or accurate
- I went to vote at my usual location, got told my multiple polling officials (over and over, I really did want to stay at first) to go five minutes away to a location that didn’t have wait times
- After me, and the herd of other hopeful voters went to that location, we stood in an unmoving line until we found out the machines weren’t working
- People were coming out saying they’d been there for two hours and giving up for another location
- I decided to wait it out as most of the line left, but within ten minutes they apparently had the machines back online
- But not all of them . . . the line crawled even though there can’t have been even thirty people ahead of me and they had nine machines
- One official had to take a tablet back and forth to a car of someone who was handicapped so they could vote but had to make no less that six (maybe more) trips to do so. It must’ve taken twenty minutes just for his ballot to get processed.
- Once I was inside and could see what was happening, I saw that the machines kept glitching, with patient and harried volunteers troubleshooting, and having to reissue ballots
- Once I got to check-in I luckily had no issues and was able to quickly cast my vote
But this is only one experience and small taste of the complaints over wait times and machine errors. It shouldn’t be this hard. Voting should be accessible and not derail our day. It should be reliable and not make me question whether my vote actually counted.
And you know, for all this complaining, none of it is a reason not to vote. This is one of the most important rights and responsibilities we have. We don’t just owe it to ourselves, we owe it to our community and for all the people who don’t have the vote. So I was happy to wait in that line and studying voters guides of local elections on my phone so I could make sure I was confidently casting a vote for every position on the ballot.
For all those barriers, I’m grateful for people’s persistence.Voting matters and the more of us that show up and exercise this right, I believe the more pressure we put on this system to make it more accessible and secure. It doesn’t have to be this hard.
With Love,
Natalie