Atlanta: Long Voting Lines and Race

Here we've been watching local news of the long lines at several early- and advanced-voting polling places in the metro-Atlanta area, but I haven't seen a lot of attention to these long lines on national news. Well, I don't watch Fox News and I only very occasionally watch cable news, so I might be missing something. However, I have read and seen people describe three-hour waits in other states as "long" waits. Try standing in a voting line for ten hours. That's what's happening here in some places. The Raw Story has an article on the issue: "For Atlanta Voters, 10 Hour Lines Await."

Watching those news items on local television, I noticed that the longest lines seemed to be majority African-American citizens. Are voting machines equitably distributed in metro-Atlanta? I wondered. I really don't know, but the long lines make me suspicious. Hilzoy, at The Washington Monthly, links to an article by Christopher Edley, Jr., on this issue of equitable distribution of voting machines and polls. Here's a long quote from that article:

What's crucial is that state and local officials nationwide salvage the situation by implementing second-best strategies: For starters, redistribute machines on the basis of voter registration, instead of assuming that minorities won't show up. Stockpile paper ballots, under lock and key, and offer a paper ballot voting option if wait times reach 45 minutes. Train platoons of reserve poll workers and stand by to shuttle them where they are needed. Commit right now to holding the polls open late if necessary. Advertise what you're prepared to do. For heaven's sake, a lot of people bled for this opportunity.

In 2001, former presidents Jimmy Carter and Gerald Ford led a commission, of which I was a member, to dissect the previous year's voting fiasco in Florida. Many of our recommendations found their way into the Help America Vote Act of 2002. Disappointingly, Congress failed to create an explicit and easily enforceable prohibition against grossly disproportionate resource allocations between polling places in the same state or even the same county -- the level of government at which, preposterously, we typically finance and administer elections. This localism means that the infrastructure of democracy vies for resources with potholes, parks, sheriffs and firefighting. It also means that locally powerful communities get better service on something that -- above all else -- is supposed to be scrupulously equal in this country.

Even without a new statute, there are enough plausible legal theories on this to boggle the mind. Voting is a fundamental right, but as I saw on the Carter-Ford commission and again as a member of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Election Day resource disparities have enormously different racial and class impacts that are based on the dynamics of power and poverty. In election cycle after cycle, registrars act surprised when problems crop up disproportionately in poor neighborhoods. If there isn't enough money to run decent elections everywhere, Americans should share the pain equally. (Christopher Edley, Jr., "A Voting Rights Disaster," The Washington Post, posted Tuesday, October 28, 2008.)

A search for information on demographics in Georgia provided me with the information that the African-American population has increased quite a bit in Georgia in the last twenty years. And the get-out-the-vote push in this election has also encouraged many African-Americans to vote when they might not have done so consistently in the past. Here is some information I found on www.gadata.org:

Migration patterns have significantly changed the racial composition of Georgia. Throughout most of the state’s history, racial distinctions were limited to black and white. The numbers from Census 2000 changed this. The African American/Black percentage of Georgia’s population rose from 27 percent to 28.7 percent. This is the highest level in fifty years. Hispanics, who can be of any race, grew from only 108,000 in 1990 to 435,000 in 2000. They now number over 5 percent of the state’s population and are found in significant numbers throughout the state. In Hall and Whitfield counties, one person in five is Hispanic. In Gwinnett County the number is close to one in nine. The Asian population also doubled in the decade to 176,000. Although only 2 percent of the state population, it is highly concentrated in the Atlanta region. In Gwinnett over 7 percent of the population is now Asian. In DeKalb and Fulton counties the percentage is more than twice the state average.

The increase in both the African American/Black population and the growth of other minority groups has greatly reduced the non-Hispanic white percentage of the state’s population. In 1990 over 70 percent of Georgia’s population could be classified as non-Hispanic white. Census 2000 found that this percentage had decreased to just over 62 percent. The total minority percentage of the population is now higher than at any time since the 1920s. This was the start of the large migration of blacks from the South to the industrial cities of the North that followed World War I. Over the next fifty years the African American/Black percentage of Georgia’s population would decline from 42 percent to an historical low of 26 percent in 1970.

Although the growth of Georgia’s new minorities, Hispanics and Asians, was the most reported result of Census 2000, the strong growth of the African American/Black population should not be understated. Between 1990 and 2000 Georgia’s African American/Black population grew from 1,746,000 to 2,349,000. This was an increase of almost 35 percent. Much of this increase is the result of migration patterns. Only New York and Texas now have larger African American/Black populations. Georgia’s African American/Black population surpassed both California and Florida in the last decade. The percentage increase was the largest of any state with a significant 1990 population of this minority group. The numerical increase of 603,000 was the largest of any state in the nation. At current growth rates, Georgia will pass both Texas and New York in the next few years to have the largest African American/Black population of any state. [my emphasis]

The change in demographics has been especially profound in the Atlanta region. The 10 county area of the Atlanta Regional Commission had a minority population of less than 23 percent in 1970. By 1990 this number had increased to almost one-third of the region’s population. Census 2000 found that non-Hispanic whites had declined to just over 55 percent of the total. Even in the full twenty county Metropolitan Statistical Area the minority percentage now exceeds 40 percent.

Of the 14 largest counties in the state (populations of 100,000 or more), the non-Hispanic white percentage of the population is under 50 percent in Bibb, Clayton, DeKalb, Fulton, Muscogee and Richmond. Total minority populations exceed 40 percent in Chatham County and 30 percent in Clarke, Cobb, Gwinnett, and Houston counties. Hall County’s minority population is now 29 percent. Only in Cherokee and Henry is the minority percentage of the population less than 20 percent. ("Georgia Population Trends 1990 to 2000")

These demographics should suggest to Georgia Republicans that they need to reach out to minorities rather than rallying their white supporters by "energizing" them with news that a large African-American turn-out threatens their power: "Heavy Black Turnout Threatens Georgia Senator," The New York Times, by Carl Hulse, October 29, 2008.

These are the words of Saxby Chambliss, whose Senate seat is being challenged by Democrat Jim Martin:

“There has always been a rush to the polls by African-Americans early,” he said at the square in Covington, a quick stop on a bus tour as the campaign entered its final week. He predicted the crowds of early voters would motivate Republicans to turn out. “It has also got our side energized, they see what is happening,” he said.