The Real Reasons You Waited Hours in Line to Vote

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2 NOV 20 2012, 1:00 PM ET 10

An Obama campaign legal adviser explains the humiliating meltdown in voting we saw around the country during this year’s presidential election.

Voters in Miami on November 6 (Andrew Innerarity/Reuters)

In the coming months, proposals will abound for election reforms to address the embarrassment to American democracy — and the indignity to citizens — of 8-hour lines to vote. But what, precisely, accounts for these lines in places like Prince William County and the Norfolk and Hampton areas of Virginia, or Broward, Miami-Dade, and Palm Beach counties in Florida? As a Senior Legal Advisor to the Obama campaign with responsibility for these and other voting issues, I want to share the knowledge the campaign’s thousands of observers on the ground generated about the underlying causes.

These causes can be grouped into three categories. I will focus specifically on Virginia, but the causes are largely similar, if not identical, elsewhere.

via The Real Reasons You Waited Hours in Line to Vote – Richard H. Pildes – The Atlantic.