NEW POLL NOW TRUMP UP

Both rich and poor areas in Maricopa County were left underserved by the lack of polling sites for Tuesday's presidential preference election, but polling places were particularly sparse in poorer areas of west Phoenix, Glendale and the southwest Valley, according to an analysis by The Arizona Republic.

Louis Brooks, 87, has walked to cast a vote at his neighborhood polling place in Georgia’s predominantly black Lincoln Park neighborhood for five decades. But not this year.



Brooks says he will not vote in the presidential election for the first time he can remember after local officials moved the polling station more than 2 miles (3 km) away as part of a plan to cut the number of voting sites in Upson County.



"I can't get there. I can't drive, and it's too far to walk," said Brooks, a black retired mill worker and long-time Democratic Party supporter. He said he does not know how to vote by mail and doesn't know anyone who can give him a ride.



A Reuters survey found local governments in nearly a dozen, mostly Republican-dominated counties in Georgia have adopted plans to reduce the number of voting stations, citing cost savings and efficiency.

Each state studied presents its own nuances and qualifications. There were no perfectly uniform findings. That said, there are unmistakable patterns that emerge:



Voters in precincts with more minorities experienced longer waits. This mirrors findings from two prior studies, suggesting a genuine problem that needs to be addressed. For example, in South Carolina, the 10 precincts with the longest waits had, on average, more than twice the percentage of black registered voters (64 percent) than the statewide average (27 percent).

Voters in precincts with higher percentages of minority voters tended to have fewer machines. This is the first multi-state study to assess voting machine allocation by race, and the findings are consistent with two county-level studies. In Maryland, by way of illustration, the 10 precincts with the lowest number of machines per voter had, on average, more than double the percentage of Latino voting age citizens (19 percent) as the statewide average (7 percent).

Precincts with the longest lines had fewer machines, poll workers, or both. This is the first multi-state study to assess machine and poll worker allocation. Our findings are consistent with the one other study of machine allocation, which focused on one particular county. In Florida, for example, the 10 precincts with the longest lines had nearly half as many poll workers per voter as the statewide average.

There is widespread non-compliance with existing state requirements setting resource allocation. Both Maryland and South Carolina set certain requirements for what polling places are supposed to provide voters, but we found that only 25 percent of the precincts studied in South Carolina and 11 percent of the precincts in Maryland complied with these requirements.