A new study from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies has found that black voters wait twice as long to cast their vote as white voters. Like voter ID laws, long waiting times can help suppress votes.
The Joint Center was able to break wait times down by race using data from the Cooperative Congressional Election Study, Fusion reported.
On average, black voters wait 23 minutes in comparison to the 12 minutes white voters waited, according to CCES average waiting times from the 2012 presidential election.
The Joint Center study points out lack of resources in neighborhoods largely inhabited by people of color as one of the contributing factors to the difference in voting wait times. Issues include not having enough poll workers to accommodate voters, a lack of voting machines, and errors in voting registration rolls. During the New York primary this year, 126,000 registered Democrats were removed from voter registration lists in Brooklyn.
Another contributing factor listed by the study was cutbacks to early voting programs. Such programs help avoid long waiting times that some people can’t afford if they have to work. The Joint Center reported that people of color in Florida waited up to a whopping seven hours to vote in the 2012 election.
In its video about combating long waiting lines to vote, which you can view above, the Joint Center said Miami-Dade County, Fla.—inhabited by 85 percent people of color—waited an average of 73 minutes to vote, while the predominantly white Citrus County, Fla. waited 0 minutes.
Despite the difficulties outlined in the study, this election has seen moves to increase voter turnout. For example, a judge allowed 17-year-olds in Ohio to vote in the primaries after Sen. Bernie Sanders filed a lawsuit, so long as they turned legal voting age before November.
