curse of the paper ballot
by melani sutedja
Waking up at 4:30 AM on the chilly morning of Big Tuesday stings. Huddling in the back of a van with a cup of Folgers and a clipboard, I was headed towards a polling station in beautiful San Mateo County, south of San Francisco County, to gather data on voting behavior and its relation to the efficiency of what voting system each county had. I had to observe how long the lines were, especially if one of the direct-recording electronic (DRE) machines broke and people left as a result of long waits. By the end of the day, however, there were no problems--people left happy, each taking an average of only 10 minutes to check in at the front desk and vote. Across the bay, however, people in Alameda County had to wait longer, some even 45 minutes, to cast in votes. A larger-than-expected Democrat turnout caught many polling stations off-guard, forcing voters to wait while poll-workers made copies of provisional ballots. As the electoral process slowed, it forced some to leave the lines and miss out on their opportunities to vote. The problem? Alameda County uses paper ballots, not the convenience of DRE machines. Hence, workers had to photocopy ballots themselves. By the time they finished, some had already “balked,” or left the line due to prolonged waiting.
It is interesting when considering the racial and socioeconomic makeup of these different communities. How is it that, instead of using easier and assistive high-tech machines, a county is forced to use a more exhaustive and confusing form of punching ballots? When taking Alameda’s demographics into consideration -- a 26% Asian American population, of which, the Asian Law Caucus and the Asian Pacific American Legal Center estimates, are 40% Democrat -- there seems to be a trend towards whose votes become filtered out, or discouraged, from the voting process. Compare this to the San Mateo district, where a 2006 Voting Modernization Board decided to invest over ten million dollars in new voting equipment for elections. While taking into account the city’s median income level of $73,916 (compare to Alameda’s $56,285) amongst its 66% White and 15% Asian American population, one thinks there should be some government policies that help the lower income districts of Berkeley, Oakland, Hayward and Fremont at least upgrade from paper ballots. Only 1.7% registered voters use paper ballots in the United States; why are these counties the select few?
Henry Brady, Professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley, is heading an ongoing study on the phenomena of voting technology and their consequences on wait time. Working alongside a few graduate students from the Department of Public Policy, they have organized a team of students to collect data from San Mateo, Alameda and Napa County during the California primaries. Finding trends will hopefully “maximize voter convenience by selecting the optimal voting systems and procedures for their counties,” according to the Election Survey website. If trends amongst certain precincts develop--possibly distinctions between affluent and lower income neighborhoods--the Election Survey team will hope to bring the case before the agenda of the National Association of Secretary of State in hopes to even out the electoral playing field.
More importantly, this might mean fewer obstacles for the Asian American community in a process already made difficult by language barriers, the need for translations, and at times, sentiments of apathy. “There’s a social justice component to this,” Morgan Hanger, a second-year Master of Public Policy Candidate comments to a group of student data gatherers on Tuesday morning. “Anyone can research for data and write it down for their resumes, but this...this can actually have the power to change policy.” By recognizing a problem as simple as voting machines, and its link to either racial or class voting disenfranchisement, it can. And with that (along with another cup of coffee), the morning sting seems more bearable.