Hopefully it isn’t against the rules of the road to use a diary in this manner, my apologies in advance.
Where I live, voting lines are unheard of. So when the topic of long lines in Democratic stronghold areas came up in a discussion with a family member, I was quickly out of my depth.
We’ve all seen the images and reports, usually from major metropolitan areas, where poll lines are extremely long and voters may take hours or even the better part of a day to cast their vote. Frequently this is seen as a form of vote suppression, where the implication is that the number of polling places in a heavily Democratic area has been restricted in order to make voting more difficult.
My question is how exactly do these conditions come about? Generally the city government is controlled by Democrats and I assume that county governments where a major city is present are generally controlled by Democrats as well (not always of course). Is it not within the power of the local Democratically controlled governments to remedy a lack of polling locations within their city? I’m sure there are many other factors that contribute to this type of situation, so please forgive my ignorance. If you could drop some knowledge on me it would be very much appreciated!