Lost Voters, Lost Votes
The New Organizing Institute recently released a report, Lost Voters, Lost Votes: When Citizens Don't Know Where to Vote, Democracy Loses highlighting the effects of polling place changes and consolidation on citizens' ability to vote. The report notes that in 2008 "an estimated 1.9 million voters did not cast a ballot for one simple and solvable reason: they did not know where to go." In addition, in 2008, 90,000 provisional ballots were not counted because voters cast their ballots in the wrong precinct.
A main reason why voters end up lost is that polling locations change from election to election. In 2010 a big factor will be that tight budgets will cause counties to consolidate polling places, as has already been seen in Ohio, Alabama, Hawaii and Montana. NOI predicts that if the same level of polling location changes occurs after this census as occurred after the 2000 census, in 2012 an excess of 29 million established voters could have their polling locations changed.
Contents
- Lack of Polling Location Information Leads to Millions of Lost Votes
- 1.9 Million Votes Lost: A Conservative Estimate
- The Looming Challenge of 2012
- Online Poll Locators: Essential but an Incomplete Solution
- Conclusion: A Multi-Modal Solution
