All over the Super Tuesday states, but particularly in Texas and California, the right to vote was the loser. Both out-and-out voter suppression and technical problems marred Tuesday's voting, ending up in hours-long lines and confusion. It's a disturbing preview for the general election that the Democratic campaigns are going to have to find a way to address, since Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell is not going to allow Congress to do so.
Since 2012, Texas has closed 750 polling locations, the vast majority in the 50 counties with the largest black and Latino populations. Between 2012 and 2018, those counties lost 542 polling sites while at the same time saw their populations grow by 2.5 million. The 50 counties with the lowest populations of color only lost 34 polling locations, but also saw a population drop of 13,000. That's as casebook as it gets for voter suppression. The practical effect of that was Hervis Rogers, waiting more than six hours in line at Texas Southern University to cast his ballot. Until nearly 1:30 AM. "I wanted to get my vote in, voice my opinion. I wasn't going to let anything stop me, so I waited it out," Rogers said. He should not have had to. And for every Hervis Rogers who was able to wait in line for six hours, who knows how many couldn't and walked away.
Those long lines were reported all over the state, where two and three hour waits were common. But polling location scarcity wasn't the only issue. Compounding that, there was a wave of robocalls to Texas voters telling independents and Republicans to show up to vote, and telling Democrats the vote was on Wednesday. Heavy web traffic took a state-run voter information website listing polling locations down for a chunk of the day. The same issue happened in Minnesota.
In California, technical problems with a $300 million new system in Los Angeles caused hours-long waits for many and many having to cast provision ballots because the systems were just too clogged with voters. Some efforts to expand voting compounded problems, with new same-day registrations coming in at the same time Los Angeles County tried a new system where voters could go to any one of 979 vote centers. Some centers were overwhelmed and checking in voters caused problems. New touch-screen voting devices were bogged down when too many people were trying to use that system. Beyond the problems in LA, "election workers in 15 counties, including Fresno, Napa and Sacramento, were unable to connect to the statewide voter registration database, said Sam Mahood, spokesman for the secretary of state’s office."
What can be done? In the absence of help from McConnell and Trump—both of whom see personal benefit in electoral chaos—the focus of Democratic campaigns needs to be on voter registration, turning out early, and absentee voting to the maximum. Make as many ballots in as many states as possible happen on paper. Maybe that's something Michael Bloomberg could spend his millions advertising, now that he's out of the running.