Voter Suppression 101: How Can They Just Eliminate So Many Polling Stations?

Photo Credit: Michael Holahan, Augusta Chronicle

This is Part 2 of my series on measures the GOP uses to restrict or suppress the vote, focusing on the elimination of polling stations.

When states and counties make it more burdensome to vote because the polling places are too far away or—but usually and—the lines are far too long, many voters simply don’t show up. And who could blame them, when waits can be a whole day long and the stations are already understaffed or experiencing frustrating technical problems.

That was in part why the mail-in ballot movement that swept the country during pandemic, even in GOP-controlled states, initially dealt a blow to this common suppression tactic. Voters in many states could finally cast no-excuse-needed absentee ballots and use drop boxes or the USPS, such as it was, instead of braving those lines. Millions took advantage of this, enough to build a huge pre-Election Day lead by Democrats in key swing states. This was not lost on the GOP.

With mail-in voting once again under enormous pressure, it’s important to take a close look at how difficult the GOP actually has made things for in person voters. You’d think that the blatant elimination of polling places especially in minority neighborhoods would be quickly struck down by the courts, but you’d be wrong.

In the 2013 Shelby County decision, Chief Justice Roberts gutted the “pre-clearance” provision of the Voting Rights Act, meaning changes in voting rules and resources could take place in jurisdictions that were already notorious for suppressing votes without the Justice Department or a federal court having to approve the change in advance. The result was predictable: Nine states once covered by that law slashed 2,811 polling stations, most in the last four years.

Then Covid-19 hit, and the shuttering accelerated. Across the country, over 21,000 polling stations have closed since 2016. Poor, rural communities suffered the biggest number of closures, making it very hard for those without access to reliable postal service or transportation to cast their votes. (This disproportionately affects Indigeneous voters, for example, who were key to Biden’s narrow victory in Arizona.) Voters affected by the closures would have to challenge them after the fact, often with little time or resources to do so.

In Georgia, the population has grown by nearly 2 million since Shelby County, but the number of polling stations has fallen by 10 percent. Metropolitan Atlanta was hardest hit by this. While it has over half the state’s active voters, it has only 38 percent of its polling places, according to an analysis by Georgia Public Broadcasting and ProPublica. That has meant that the average number of people pressed into a polling station has risen from 2,600 in 2012 to over 3,600 by 2020, a rise of 40 percent. This has resulted in huge lines and long waits, with a deep racial disparity. Averaged across the country, minority voters wait around 45 percent longer in lines to vote that white voters, according to the Brennan Center for Justice. 

With mail-in voting under attack and already a huge imbalance in the way voting resources are allocated, voting rights advocates warn that voter suppression has reached emergency levels. Adrienne Jones, a professor or political science at Morehouse College in Atlanta, put it succinctly in an interview with NPR: “You're closing down polling places so people have a more difficult time getting there. You're making vote-by-mail difficult or confusing. Now we're in court arguing about which ballots are going to be accepted, and it means that people have less trust in our state.”

“Less trust” may be precisely what the GOP is hoping will result, even if the measures fall in court. The GOP watched in dismay as former president Trump undermined faith in the fairness of the Georgia elections through his lies about supposed massive election fraud, and that caused a sharp dip in enthusiasm among the GOP base, likely leading to loss of both senate races in Georgia and control of the chamber. By blatantly broadcasting voter suppression of minorities, without apology, GOP leaders are hoping that they actively discourage these voters from participating.

In short, it truly is the New Jim Crow. The loss of faith in fairness, and the assertion of the majority’s electoral supremacy, are precisely the point. 

(To help fight voter suppression in places like Georgia, and to help counter the GOP with grassroots activism, consider making a small monthly donation to Fair Fight, run by voting rights advocate Stacey Abrams.)