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In the November 2022 election, lines at polling places in Ann Arbor, Michigan, spilled out of buildings and down some city streets.
More voters were taking advantage of the opportunity to register and vote on the same day. But the process of registering hundreds of new voters and issuing them absentee ballots had to be done by clerk’s office staff and took up to five minutes per person, leading to waits that were often hours long, City Clerk Jackie Beaudry recounted to Votebeat.
Election officials weren’t willing to let that happen again. So Beaudry, along with other local clerks dealing with similar backups, successfully lobbied lawmakers in Lansing to allow people who register on Election Day to be able to cast regular ballots issued by standard poll workers. In the meantime, voters also approved measures allowing them to vote early in every statewide or federal election, alleviating pressure on Election Day voting.
Those changes cut the time to process each newly registered voter down to almost nothing, Beaudry said, and all but eliminated the city’s long lines in 2024. “I think on Election Day, the longest same-day registration wait was like 15 minutes,” Beaudry said.
Lines at polling places are the bane of election administrators nationwide. Long waits can take hours out of a voter’s day; in the worst-case scenario, they can even deter them from voting, robbing them of their voice in the election. So officials like Beaudry often feel duty-bound to do everything they can to minimize these waits.
The best kind of line, election officials typically agree, is no line at all. But the second-best — one that ensures a voter gets to cast their ballot in a timely manner, even if they do have to wait — relies on a precise combination of policy making, engineering, and sociology to make everything run smoothly.
Supporting them are researchers at universities across the country who study ways to make lines not only more efficient but also more tolerable for the voters who have to wait in them.
Eliminating lines altogether can be difficult. Local and state laws, including those focused on electioneering or election security, sometimes limit what is possible. But even within those confines, experts and election officials around the country have found that good lines are possible, even likely, with a little collaboration and a healthy amount of forethought.
What makes a good line?
What makes a bad line probably feels obvious to the people waiting in it. But what makes a good line is a little less clear cut. Charles Stewart, a political scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said there are two answers to the question.
The first is that it should be short. Specifically, the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, convened by then-President Barack Obama in 2013, concluded in a 2014 report that, “as a general rule, no voter should have to wait more than half an hour in order to have an opportunity to vote.”
Of course, that’s not always possible. In 2012 — a presidential election before mail and absentee voting became widespread — research found that some 10 million voters probably waited at least that long to cast their ballot, with half of those voters waiting more than an hour.
So the second secret to a good line, Stewart said, is having enough resources to make it move smoothly even if it is longer.
For example, Stewart’s research has found that check-in stations are one of the worst bottlenecks on Election Day. But having an extra person to check in voters allows twice as many voters to get their ballots and start filling them out. That makes the wait shorter, which is key, but also can just make people feel that things are moving faster.
Stewart points to Disney theme parks as a great example. One of the members of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration was Brian Bitton, then the vice president of global park operations at Walt Disney Parks and Resorts. The commission held one of its meetings at Disney World, Stewart said, to gain real-world context on how lines can be improved even when they can’t be shortened.
Along with trying to make lines shorter, he said, Disney did things “to manage how people were thinking about the lines they encountered.”
That meant giving people things to do while in line, which in an electoral context could look like giving someone a sample ballot to consider. It also meant giving people live tracking of how long the lines are, so they can decide when to go or know what to expect.
Improving the experience of waiting can be as easy as having staff greeting people in line, Stewart said, or having a poll worker check the pens to make sure no one has to wait for a working one.
“Using staff to make sure the experience is pleasant, that’s efficient to a voter,” he said.
The policies that can make lines bad
Keeping people stimulated while they wait makes them less annoyed, Stewart said. But a number of states have policies that limit what people waiting in line, or the people helping them, can do.
For instance, in Ann Arbor in 2022, volunteers provided those waiting outdoors in the cool autumn temperatures with blankets. That would likely run afoul of the rules in a few other states, where laws ban people from providing food, beverages, or “anything of value” to voters.
Georgia is one of the most well-known examples of that, but similarly strict laws exist in Montana, Idaho, and other states. The laws are intended to prevent candidates from influencing people’s vote. But they can also make waiting in line less bearable.
Gretchen Macht, the founder and executive director of the University of Rhode Island’s Engineering for Democracy Institute, told Votebeat that laws that don’t take real-world experiences into account often end up being too rigid. From an engineering perspective, lines are a matter of balancing systems by meeting needs as they arise.
For example, when Macht’s team looked into the causes of lines at Rhode Island polling places, one culprit was a law that allowed for only one checkout station per precinct.
“That’s what was causing lines, especially if there was any sort of failure, especially if there was high turnout,” Macht said. Her team eventually worked with the state to help amend the law.
And sometimes, the culprit is a local failure to plan. If officials keep tabs on when their polling places are busiest, they can better allocate resources throughout the day, Macht said.
Gathering tangible data on when voters show up and acting on it, rather than just gut feelings about people showing up after the standard work day, can be a lot of work but often pays off, Stewart said. It allows for better messaging on what voters can expect and, in many cases, may motivate them to go at off-peak times or even vote early or absentee when available.
“People are less irritated at waiting in line when they can control being in that line,” he said.
Creative solutions can solve line bottlenecks
The best policies are the ones that consider the human aspects of voting. That means trying to mitigate the irritating parts of lines or the confusing parts of a governmental process. But it also means accounting for quirks, such as voters’ desire to take a picture of their ballot at the voting booth. Officials have found that many voters really relish that opportunity.
But Stewart studied that in Michigan and found that, over the course of the day, such photo taking tied up voting booths and added immensely to wait times.
As a result, many Michigan election officials have begun to include separate photo stations at their polling places, typically separate from voting booths and away from where other voters may be unwittingly caught in the photos, which would go against Michigan’s rules.
In Ann Arbor, Beaudry’s photo stations were originally just posters on the wall. But the city eventually worked with University of Michigan design professors to make the stations more visually appealing. The effort has paid off, especially for younger voters, who find them to be a fun treat after casting a ballot.
But the best thing, Beaudry said? The city’s lines are nearly nonexistent now.
Hayley Harding is a reporter for Votebeat based in Michigan. Contact Hayley at hharding@votebeat.org.
