https://www.chron.com/news/houston-texas/houston/article/Long-lines-drag-Election-Day-deep-into-the-night-15103506.php
'The worst voting experience': Long lines drag Super Tuesday deep into the night for some voters
By Mike Morris, Samantha Ketterer, and Nicole Hensley
Updated 6:46 am CST, Wednesday, March 4, 2020
Jacqueline Manuel closes her eyes as she waits in line to vote a little before midnight Tuesday, March 3, 2020, at Texas Southern University in Houston. Manuel said she had been in line for almost five hours. As of midnight, she had not yet voted.
Jacqueline Manuel closes her eyes as she waits in line to vote a little before midnight Tuesday, March 3, 2020, at Texas Southern University in Houston. Manuel said she had been in line for almost five hours.
Photo: Jon Shapley, Houston Chronicle / Staff Photographer
Dozens of Democratic voters were still waiting to cast ballots at midnight in Houston, turning Super Tuesday into a painful slog for some citizens amid questions about how the County Clerk's office had allocated its voting machines across the county.
Janet Gonzalez left work early and at 5:30 p.m. checked a website the clerk's office runs to show wait times at polling places. It seemed Texas Southern University had a short wait, but when she arrived she found a massive line. She waited an hour outside and three more inside before she finally cast her ballot.
Officials with the clerk's office acknowledged the accuracy of the wait-times website is reliant on election workers manually updating the status of their polling places.
Some people in line gave up and walked away, Gonzalez said. Others briefly sought refuge on a scattering of chairs before giving them up to others as the line inched forward.
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"It was a challenge," Gonzalez said. "You have to look around at the elderly people and overcome your own pain."
Veronica DeBoerst joined the throngs of voters at TSU at 6:30 p.m. after visiting her sister at the hospital.
"One of my feet is telling me to go sit down," DeBoerst said. "If I have to sit down and scoot my way in, I'll do it."
Voter L. Wayne Ashley also said he was led astray by the county's wait-time website. Ashley works at the University of Houston and was planning to vote there, but saw the line and thought twice. Then he checked the county's online map and saw that TSU was the only nearby site still "green," indicating a short wait. He parked and walked in, only to discover his blunder.
"You can't see the line from the parking lot, and there was obviously a ridiculous line," Ashley said.
After waiting four hours to cast his own ballot at TSU, Bryan Escobedo walked outside to a crowd cheering his patience. He spoke of voters sharing painkillers and water to keep their neighbors engaged.
"This is the worst voting experience I've ever had," he said. "If it's hard, that means you have to do it. They bank on people walking away."
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Democratic County Clerk Diane Trautman and her staff said each of the county's 401 polling places started with between 16 and 48 machines, depending on anticipated turnout, but at each location the machines were divided equally between the Democrat and Republican primaries, regardless of whether the location heavily favored one party or the other.
"If we had given one five and one 10, and that other one had a line, they would say, 'You slighted us,'" Trautman said late Tuesday. "So we wanted to be fair and equal and start at the same amount. Through the day, we have been sending out additional machines to the Democratic judges to the extent that we ran out."
During Election Day the clerk's office dispatched 68 extra voting machines to Democratic polls, including 14 to TSU, in response to election judges' requests. Trautman added that some of the machines assigned to TSU to start the day had to be replaced after malfunctioning.
Trautman said a joint primary — which would have allowed both parties' ballots to be loaded on each voting machine, rather than separating the equipment by party — would have reduced the lines, but the GOP rejected the idea.
"That would be just one line, there's not a line for each party, so all the voters can use all the machines," she said. "That would really have expedited this whole thing. I'll be pushing that for next time."
County GOP chair Paul Simpson disagreed, saying he rejected that approach in part because he did not want his voters waiting in long lines created by the contested Democratic presidential primary.
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"If they had allocated the equipment properly they could probably would not have had long lines," Simpson said, "but that the was the county clerk's decision as to how to allocate the machines."
County Democratic Party chair Lillie Schechter said her staff did not grasp until Tuesday that when Trautman spoke of allocating the machines "equitably" she meant dividing them equally at each polling site, rather than giving each party the same number of machines but concentrating most of them in areas known to be strongholds of each party.
"We're thrilled that turnout has been so high today and that's been super exciting, but I think the story with the voting machines goes a step farther back than just how the voting machines are allocated," she said. "The machines are part of the problem but not the whole problem."
In order to preserve citizens' ability to vote at any polling place on Election Day – a new policy under Trautman, and one GOP officials have opposed – Schechter said the parties needed to agree on shared polling locations. That gave Republicans more power in the negotiation, she said, and resulted in more than 60 percent of Tuesday's polling sites being located in Republican-held county commissioner precincts, with less than 40 percent in commissioner precincts held by Democrats.
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The nonprofit Texas Civil Rights Project took issue with the delays, noting that many polling places with long waits were in predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods.
"Once again, black and brown voters in Harris County are facing unacceptable wait times in polling locations in their communities," said the group's president, Mimi Marziani. "Infuriatingly, we know that some voters have already given up and gone home. Even worse, we know that this is not the first time voters have faced this issue. We call upon Harris County leaders to come together and solve this problem before the general election."
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