Long lines mar voting on Super Tuesday
California, Texas report most of the problems
Voters stood in line for two hours at some California precincts on Super Tuesday, but that was nothing compared with what some voters endured in Texas, where some ballots were finally cast at midnight.
The two biggest delegate prizes on Super Tuesday also became the two biggest headaches for voters, and for different reasons. A new voting system in Los Angeles County and a bevy of new statewide election reforms conspired to slow the process for scores of California voters. In Texas, a partycontrolled primary system that includes requiring equal numbers of voting machines for both major political parties appears to be a key reason thousands of Democratic voters were stuck at polling places for five, six, even seven hours.
“I first tried to vote at 1 p.m. Central time, and finally got done at 6:05. I have never had an experience like this before,” said Ahmed King, a radiology technician in Houston.
He said he was able to vote only after giving up on long lines in majority African American areas and heading to a polling place in a predominantly white and Latino neighborhood. In 2019, Harris County adopted a system, used by many other Texas counties, that lets voters cast their ballot at any polling place in the county.
Bryan Escobedo waited four hours to cast his ballot at Texas Southern University in Houston. He told the Houston Chronicle that some voters were sharing painkillers and water to help them get through the grueling wait time.
“This is the worst voting experience I’ve ever had,” Escobedo said. “If it’s hard, that means you have to do it. They bank on people walking away.”
Elections officials in Harris County, which includes Houston, deployed between 90 and 100 reserve voting machines to some polling places with the longest lines, but it was too little, too late for some. King and other voters said they saw a number of people walking away without casting a ballot.
“Texas has some of the lowest voting rates, and we are making it harder for people,” said Mary Moreno, spokeswoman for the Texas Organizing Project.
Fears of the coronavirus complicated voting in some parts of the country early in the day, after poll workers failed to show up. County election officials quickly back-filled those spots, and voting resumed.
While there were scattered reports of voting glitches in several of the states voting on Super Tuesday, California and Texas, the nation’s most populous states, had the most noticeable problems.
The supervisor of elections in Texas’ Harris County blamed the long lines at some polling locations on having to treat both parties the same even though only one had a contested presidential primary. Michael Winn said he tried to have a shared primary where voters no matter their party would have used the same equipment to cast their ballots, but Republicans refused.
California experienced problems statewide because of new voting reforms such as same-day registration and a surge in voters eager to cast a ballot in the hotly contested presidential primary. That left more than a dozen counties temporarily unable to access the state’s voter registration database.