Skip to content
Search

Latest Stories

Top Stories

What our cell phones reveal about racial disparity in wait times at the polls

What our cell phones reveal about racial disparity in wait times at the polls

Voters waiting in line outside Bethel Missionary Baptist Church in Birmingham, Ala, in 2008.

Mario Tama/Getty Images

People living in African-American neighborhoods had to wait substantially longer to cast their ballots in the last presidential election than those in white neighborhoods, researchers say.

Their work joins the expanding body of evidence that members of minority groups face frequent and diverse obstacles to voting. But what makes this study particularly interesting is the high-tech way researchers reached the conclusion – by using geo-located data from cell phones.


A paper detailing the research — by M. Keith Chen and Ryne Rohla of UCLA, Kareem Haggag of Carnegie Mellon University and Devin Pope of the University of Chicago — is under review by Science magazine.

They concluded that residents of neighborhoods with entirely black populations waited 29 percent longer to vote in November 2016 than did residents of neighborhoods with all-white demographics. They also concluded that such all-African-American enclaves were 74 percent more likely than voters from totally white neighborhoods to have spend more than half an hour at their polling place.

Long wait times cost the national economy more than a half billion dollars, according a separate study cited by the researchers. Also, the inconvenience of so much waiting around may prompt would-be voters to abandon the line before they get to the front – or to decide against going to their polling places at all.

This report is particularly significant because it seems to improve on previous research on long wait times, which has relied on self-reporting or the use of stop watches by researchers.

In this case, researchers obtained location data on 10 million cell phones through SafeGraph Inc., a company that mostly provides data to retailers on the travel habits of potential customers. The data, which does not identify individual cell phone owners, records where the person holding the phone is every few minutes.

This information was combined with a second dataset containing the coordinates for more than 90,000 libraries, churches, town halls, fire stations and other polling locations across the country. This was used to create "geofences" around each polling place so that researchers could track when people arrived and left the polls.

Using Census Bureau data, the researchers focused their work on relatively small areas, known as census blocks, where the populations were entirely black and entirely white.

The final sample used for the analysis was of more than 150,000 individuals identified as likely voters at more than 40,000 polling locations.

The average wait time for voters in the study was 19 minutes. Using regression analysis, researchers found that moving from a block with no black voters to one where most of the electorate is African-American added more than 5 minutes to the wait time.

Researchers conclude that their technique allows for estimating disparities in wait times and "provides policymakers an easily available and repeatable tool to both diagnose and monitor progress towards reducing such disparities."

Read More

Rear view diverse voters waiting for polling place to open
SDI Productions/Getty Images

Open Primaries Topic Creates a Major Tension for Independents

Open primaries create fine opportunities for citizens who are registered as independents or unaffiliated voters to vote for either Democrats or Republicans in primary elections, but they tacitly undermine the mission of those independents who are opposed to both major parties by luring them into establishment electoral politics. Indeed, independents who are tempted to support independent candidates or an independent political movement can be converted to advocates of our duopoly if their states have one form or another of Open Primaries.

Twenty U.S. states currently have Open Primaries for at least one political party at the presidential, congressional, and state levels, including Georgia, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and Wisconsin. At least 15 states conduct "semi-closed" primaries, a middle position in which unaffiliated voters still have an option to choose to vote in one of the major party primaries. 

Keep ReadingShow less
Voter registration
The national voter registration form is now available in 20 non-English languages, including three Native American languages.
SDI Productions

With Ranked Choice Voting in NYC, Women Win

As New York prepares to choose its next city council and mayor in primaries this week, it’s worth remembering that the road to gender equality in the nation’s largest city has been long and slow.

Before 2021, New York’s 51-member council had always been majority male. Women hadn’t even gotten close to a majority. The best showing had been 18 seats, just a tick above 35 percent.

Keep ReadingShow less
Independent Voters Just Got Power in Nevada – if the Governor Lets It Happen

"On Las Vegas Boulevard" sign.

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash. Unplash+ license obtained by IVN Editor Shawn Griffiths.

Independent Voters Just Got Power in Nevada – if the Governor Lets It Happen

CARSON CITY, NEV. - A surprise last-minute bill to open primary elections to Nevada’s largest voting bloc, registered unaffiliated voters, moved quickly through the state legislature and was approved by a majority of lawmakers on the last day of the legislative session Monday.

The bill, AB597, allows voters not registered with a political party to pick between a Republican and Democratic primary ballot in future election cycles. It does not apply to the state’s presidential preference elections, which would remain closed to registered party members.

Keep ReadingShow less
Voter registration

In April 2025, the SAVE Act has been reintroduced in the 119th Congress and passed the House, with a much stronger chance of becoming law given the current political landscape.

SDI Productions

The SAVE Act: Addressing a Non-Existent Problem at the Cost of Voter Access?

In July 2024, I wrote about the Safeguard American Voter Eligibility (SAVE) Act when it was first introduced in Congress. And Sarah and I discussed it in an episode of Beyond the Bill Number which you can still listen to. Now, in April 2025, the SAVE Act has been reintroduced in the 119th Congress and passed the House, with a much stronger chance of becoming law given the current political landscape. It's time to revisit this legislation and examine its implications for American voters.

Read the IssueVoter analysis of the bill here for further insight and commentary.

Keep ReadingShow less