September, 15 2014, 12:15pm EDT
New Study: Lack of Voting Resources Leads to Long Lines, Delays Longer in Minority Precincts
Studied States Fail to Comply With Resource Allocation Requirements
NEW YORK, NY
Lack of poll workers and low numbers of voting machines are key contributors to long voting lines, and precincts with more minorities experienced longer waits, according to a new study released today by the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU School of Law.
Although many factors may contribute to long lines at the polls, little research has assessed how polling place resource allocation contributes to delays. In advance of the 2014 midterm election, Election Day Long Lines: Resource Allocation attempts to fill that gap by analyzing precinct-level data from states where voters faced some of the longest lines in the country in 2012: Florida, Maryland, and South Carolina.
Specifically, the study assesses how machine and poll worker distribution contributes to long lines and what role race played in predicting where lines might develop -- providing an important roadmap exploring the causes of long lines that have plagued millions of Americans.
There are four major takeaways from our research:
- Voters in precincts with more minorities experienced longer waits. In South Carolina, for example, the 10 precincts with the longest waits had, on average, more than twice the percentage of black registered voters (64 percent) than the statewide average (27 percent).
- Voters in precincts with higher percentages of minority voters had fewer machines. In Maryland, the 10 precincts with the lowest number of machines per voter had, on average, more than double the percentage of Latino voting age citizens (19 percent) as the statewide average (7 percent).
- Precincts with the longest lines had fewer machines, poll workers, or both. In Florida, for example, the 10 precincts with the longest lines had nearly half as many poll workers per voter as the statewide average.
- There is widespread non-compliance with existing state requirements setting resource allocation. Both Maryland and South Carolina set certain requirements for what polling places are supposed to provide voters, but we found that only 25 percent of the precincts studied in South Carolina and 11 percent of the precincts studied in Maryland complied with these requirements.
"We all saw the images of voters waiting in hours-long lines in 2012. Now we know more about why that happened and how to fix it," said Myrna Perez, report co-author and deputy director of the Brennan Center's Democracy Program. "The number of poll workers and voting machines can have a huge effect on Election Day problems, particularly in areas with more minority voters. Giving sufficient resources to election officials could dramatically improve voting in America."
"These three states had some of the longest lines in 2012, and they offer clear lessons on how poor resource allocation can contribute to delays at the polls," added co-author Christopher Famighetti, the Center's voting rights researcher. "No voter should have to wait longer than 30 minutes to cast a ballot. States must take major steps to ensure all polling places have sufficient voting machines and poll workers."
Following the 2012 election, President Barack Obama convened a bipartisan commission to address the problem of long lines and determine best practices for local election officials. The commission found 10 million people waited more than 30 minutes to vote, and ultimately concluded that no voter should have to wait this long to cast a ballot.
Its key recommendations included modernizing voter registration and increasing early voting opportunities. The Brennan Center has a number of proposals outlining how to implement such reforms, including How to Fix the Voting System and How to Fix Long Lines.
See all of our Election 2014 resources.
The Brennan Center for Justice is a nonpartisan law and policy institute. We strive to uphold the values of democracy. We stand for equal justice and the rule of law. We work to craft and advance reforms that will make American democracy work, for all.
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Missouri Coalition Delivers Signatures to Get Abortion Rights on November Ballot
"This milestone for the Missourians for Constitutional Freedom campaign means that voters are one step closer to being able to use the ballot measure process to secure their rights."
May 03, 2024
Missouri currently has one of the strictest abortion bans in the United States, but a coalition behind a potential ballot measure is hoping to change that—and on Friday, it made major progress toward expanding reproductive freedom in the state.
Ahead of a Sunday deadline, Missourians for Constitutional Freedom submitted 380,159 signatures to the Missouri Secretary of State's office, which must now certify them. The signatures were collected in just three months and are over double the number needed to get the proposed amendment on the November ballot.
"Today, we turned in boxes filled with hopes and dreams of bodily autonomy," declared Tori Schafer, an ACLU attorney and coalition spokesperson, in a statement. "Our message is simple and clear: We want to make decisions about our bodies free from political interference."
A so-called "trigger law" that took effect after the U.S. Supreme Court reversedRoe v. Wade two years ago prohibits abortion care in Missouri unless the health or life of the pregnant person is at risk. There are no exceptions for rape or incest, and doctors who violate the ban could face up to 15 years behind bars.
The proposed amendment would broadly safeguard reproductive freedom in the state, protecting not only abortion care before fetal viability but also birth control, respectful birthing conditions, and miscarriage, prenatal, and postpartum care.
"Hundreds of thousands of Missourians are now having conversations about abortion and reproductive freedom; some are sharing their own abortion stories for the very first time; and all are ready to do whatever it takes to win at the ballot box this year," said Mallory Schwarz, executive director of Abortion Action Missouri and another coalition spokesperson. "Together, we are going to end Missouri's abortion ban."
Dr. Iman Alsaden, chief medical officer for Planned Parenthood Great Plains and adviser to the coalition, called Friday "a monumental day for Missouri and for my patients."
"The success of this campaign sends a clear message: Missourians trust patients to make the healthcare decisions that are best for their health and well-being," Alsaden said. "Anti-abortion politicians take note: My patients' lives are not yours to control."
Missouri is one of several states—including Arizona, Florida, and Montana—where supporters of reproductive freedom are working to pass abortion rights ballot initiatives this cycle. As the divided Congress has failed to codify Roe since the Supreme Court's 2022 decision in Dobbs v. Jackson Women's Health Organization, ballot measures have been an increasingly popular strategy.
Kelly Hall, executive director of the Fairness Project, which has backed various abortion rights ballot initiatives across the country over the past few years, welcomed the successful signature collection campaign in Missouri on Friday.
"Missourians today are living under an extremely cruel abortion ban, enacted by politicians who are profoundly out of touch with their voters," Hall said. "Missourians deserve better—they should be able to make their own healthcare decisions without government interference."
"This milestone for the Missourians for Constitutional Freedom campaign means that voters are one step closer to being able to use the ballot measure process to secure their rights this November," she added, "and we are excited to be standing with them in that fight."
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Gaza Journalists Killed by Israel Honored on World Press Freedom Day
"To claim these deaths are accidental is not only incredulous, it is insulting to the memory of professionals who lived their lives in service of truth and accuracy," said one expert.
May 03, 2024
As the international community marked World Press Freedom Day on Friday, journalists and advocates across the globe mourned and celebrated those killed in Israel's ongoing assault on the Gaza Strip.
The U.S.-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) has publicly identified at least 97 media workers killed since Israel launched its retaliatory war on October 7: 92 Palestinian, three Lebanese, and two Israeli reporters.
"Since the Israel-Gaza war began, journalists have been paying the highest price—their lives—to defend our right to the truth. Each time a journalist dies or is injured, we lose a fragment of that truth," said CPJ program director Carlos Martínez de la Serna in a Friday statement. "Journalists are civilians who are protected by international humanitarian law in times of conflict. Those responsible for their deaths face dual trials: one under international law and another before history's unforgiving gaze."
Reporters Sans Frontières (RSF)—or Reporters Without Borders—puts the journalist death toll in Gaza above 100. Middle East Monitorreports at least 144 members of the press are among the 34,622 Palestinians that Israeli forces have killed in less than seven months in what the International Court of Justice has called a plausibly genocidal campaign.
RSF on Friday released its annual Press Freedom Index. In its section on the Middle East, the group states:
Palestine (157th), the most dangerous country for reporters, is paying a high price. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) have so far killed more than 100 journalists in Gaza, including at least 22 in the course of their work. Since the start of the war, Israel (101st) has been trying to suppress the reporting coming out of the besieged enclave while disinformation infiltrates its own media ecosystem.
At the war's six-month mark in April, Jonathan Dagher, head of RSF's Middle East desk, declared that "this massacre must stop. Gaza's reporters must be protected, those who wish must be evacuated, and Gaza's gates must be opened to international media."
"The few reporters who have been able to leave bear witness to the same terrifying reality of journalists being attacked, injured, and killed," he continued, ripping the IDF for "silencing those who are driven by a duty to report the facts."
"RSF calls on the international community, its leaders, and its governments, to do everything to step up pressure on the Israeli authorities to end this disaster," Dagher added. "Palestinian journalism must be protected as a matter of urgency."
The Paris-based group nominated Palestinian journalists covering Gaza for an annual award from the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO)—an honor they received during a ceremony on Thursday.
"Each year, the UNESCO/Guillermo Cano Prize pays tribute to the courage of journalists facing difficult and dangerous circumstances," said Audrey Azoulay, the U.N. organization's director-general. "Once again this year, the prize reminds us of the importance of collective action to ensure that journalists around the world can continue to carry out their essential work to inform and investigate."
Palestinian journalists covering Israel’s war on Gaza have been awarded UNESCO’s World Press Freedom prize. More than 100 journalists, mostly Palestinians, have been killed in the war. pic.twitter.com/uSfIKsqTyQ
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 3, 2024
Nasser Abu Baker, president of the Palestinian Journalists' Syndicate and vice-president of the International Federation of Journalists, accepted the prize on behalf of his colleagues in the besieged enclave.
"Journalists in Gaza have endured a sustained attack by the Israeli army of unprecedented ferocity—but have continued to do their jobs, as witnesses to the carnage around them," he said. "It is justified that they should be honored on World Press Freedom Day. What we have seen in Gaza is surely the most sustained and deadly attack on press freedom in history. This award shows that the world has not forgotten and salutes their sacrifice for information."
Mariam Abu Dagga, a 31-year-old photojournalist for the Independent Arabic displaced in the southern Gaza city of Rafah, toldCNN: "We are covering the war on Gaza because this is our journalistic duty. It is entrusted upon us... We challenged the Israeli occupation. We challenged the difficult circumstances and the reality of this war, a genocidal war."
"Whenever a journalist is targeted, we ask ourselves who among us will get their turn of being targeted tomorrow," said Abu Dagga, who also noted the emotional toll of tasks such as photographing children beneath the rubble.
“Palestinian journalists have seen what no journalist has.”
For #WorldPressFreedomDay, we spoke to Palestinian journalist Hani Aburezeq, who's been showing the world Israel’s war on Gaza. pic.twitter.com/YikPzX12a7
— Al Jazeera English (@AJEnglish) May 3, 2024
While Israel has repeatedly claimed—as it did to CNN on Friday—that "the IDF has never, and will never, deliberately target journalists," members of the press and others have cast doubt on such comments.
“For far too long Israel has been able to operate with impunity in the occupied Palestinian territory, and this has included occasionally killing reporters, like the Palestinian-American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh, in 2022," Simon Adams, president of the Center for Victims of Torture, told the Inter Press Service.
Given the number of journalists killed in Gaza since October, he said, "to claim these deaths are accidental is not only incredulous, it is insulting to the memory of professionals who lived their lives in service of truth and accuracy."
Simon called for all journalist deaths in Gaza to be reported to the International Criminal Court and asserted that "World Press Freedom Day should be celebrated with a black armband this year."
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After Rebuking Netanyahu on Senate Floor, Schumer to Invite Israeli PM to Address Congress
Schumer called for new elections in Israel in March, saying Netanyahu and other extremists in the government were "major obstacles" to peace.
May 03, 2024
Weeks after supporters of Palestinian rights demanded that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer follow his sharp rebuke of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with "action" to change U.S. policy toward Israel, the New York Democrat's office confirmed Thursday that he is instead planning to invite the right-wing leader to speak before Congress.
"Unbelievable," said Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft executive vice president Trita Parsi, an outspoken critic of the Biden administration's support for Israel's mass killing of civilians in Gaza since October, in response to the news.
House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-La.) first proposed inviting Netanyahu to give a congressional address in March, and told The Hill that he had sent a draft of the letter inviting the prime minister to Schumer to cosign. At the time, Schumer said he would "always welcome the opportunity for the prime minister of Israel to speak to Congress in a bipartisan way," but he has not signed on to the invitation yet.
"He intends to join the invitation, the timing is being worked out," a spokesperson for Schumer told The Hill on Thursday.
Schumer angered Netanyahu in March by saying on the Senate floor that he has "has lost his way" and is being pushed to "tolerate the civilian toll in Gaza" by far-right extremists in his Cabinet, putting Israel at risk of becoming a "pariah" state.
He said that along with Hamas, Netanyahu and his Cabinet are "major obstacles" to peace in the Middle East and called for new elections in Israel.
Palestinian rights supporters welcomed Schumer's rebuke but called on him to push President Joe Biden to cut off military funding for Israel, which has killed at least 34,622 Palestinians since October and has caused dozens of people to starve to death by blocking humanitarian aid.
Progressive advocate and former congressional candidate Lindsey Boylan said she was "deeply, irretrievably disappointed" in Schumer for planning to invite Netanyahu to address a joint session of Congress.
"Netanyahu has stolen more from his own people than can ever be verbalized," said Boylan. "He is a criminal."
The news of the imminent bipartisan invitation comes as Israel is reportedly preparing to begin a full-scale ground assault on Rafah, where 1.2 million Palestinians have been displaced following the Israel Defense Forces' decimation of cities across Gaza, and as thousands of Americans have been arrested on college campuses in recent weeks for protesting U.S. support for the war.
Hundreds of people were arrested outside Schumer's home in Brooklyn last week for holding a Jewish-led Passover Seder protest in solidarity with Gaza.
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