I look at the reports from Florida and Ohio where voters spent hours upon hours in lines waiting to cast their ballots, and for the life of me, I do not understand why this is the case in this country in 2012.
I can't find it now, but a member of Obama's campaign team had a good essay about how this came about. Basically, it was mostly due to a combination of (a) budget cuts due to the parlous state of finances in many municipalities and (b) unexpectedly high turnout. And the effect was worse because (b) was especially high in areas suffering from (a), because a lot of the unanticipated turnout was made up of minorities and young people, who tend to be concentrated in less well-off urban areas. That's why one of my neighbours had to wait several hours to cast his vote in Chicago, a solidly Democratic city in Obama's home state. (The decennial census, which shifted around polling places for thousands, also didn't help at all.)
Of course, you may well be aware of all that and really be asking, "What the hell are our priorities the money was taken away from the elections budget in the first place?" For that, the best answer is that low turnout favours incumbency so there's not much incentive for politicians to favour policies promoting full enfranchisement.
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2012-12-13 09:33 pm (UTC)I can't find it now, but a member of Obama's campaign team had a good essay about how this came about. Basically, it was mostly due to a combination of (a) budget cuts due to the parlous state of finances in many municipalities and (b) unexpectedly high turnout. And the effect was worse because (b) was especially high in areas suffering from (a), because a lot of the unanticipated turnout was made up of minorities and young people, who tend to be concentrated in less well-off urban areas. That's why one of my neighbours had to wait several hours to cast his vote in Chicago, a solidly Democratic city in Obama's home state. (The decennial census, which shifted around polling places for thousands, also didn't help at all.)
Of course, you may well be aware of all that and really be asking, "What the hell are our priorities the money was taken away from the elections budget in the first place?" For that, the best answer is that low turnout favours incumbency so there's not much incentive for politicians to favour policies promoting full enfranchisement.