The US Eliminated Nearly 21,000 Election Day Polling Locations for 2020

[BlueWavePsych]

Exclusive VICE News analysis shows a 20% cut in election locations nationwide, and much deeper cuts in California, Maryland, Kentucky, New Jersey, Nevada and North Dakota.

Almost 21,000 Election Day polling places have been eliminated heading into the 2020 U.S. election, a drastic dip in voting locations driven by a heavy shift to mail voting, coronavirus-related consolidations, cost-cutting measures, and voter suppression.

VICE News obtained data from all 50 states and Washington, D.C., on the number of physical polling locations they will have in place on November 3, and compared their numbers to how many sites they had in 2016 and 2012.

What emerged was a patchwork of cuts large and small across the country. Many states made these cuts as they were expanding mail voting — 23 states made it easier to vote by mail this year because of COVID. But the overall trend is clear: Most states are eliminating polling locations, a trend that could disproportionately impact poor, young and non-white voters.

Of the 45 states that weren’t using mail voting exclusively before the 2020 election, 40 of them have decreased the number of Election Day voting locations from 2016. Of those 40 states who made cuts, 35 are not sending mail ballots to everyone, and 19 require many voters to take it upon themselves to apply for a mail ballot application. The five states that refused to allow mail voting for most people all cut voting sites, including the emerging swing state of Texas.

https://www.vice.com/en/article/pkdenn/the-us-eliminated-nearly-21000-election-day-polling-locations-for-2020

Voter suppression? What voter suppression??!!

[Retrograde]

1. Scary title, but not necessarily bad in all cases

It claims that California, for example, eliminated over 70% of polling sites. That is true, but they did adopt several measures to make voting easier at the same time. First, every registered voter receives a mail-in, postage-paid ballot. They're replaced local polling places with voting centers, open the two weekends before the election and on election day. Most importantly, voters can vote in any voting center in their county rather than being limited to their assigned polling place. So yeah, we lost the local polling places but the net result is easier voting for most people.

Places like Texas, Florida, Alabama, on the other hand....

This is why local and state elections are so important: that's where these policies come from.

[DeminPennswoods]

2. Polling locations aren't static

Some locations simply no longer want to be polling places. That happened when I was an election judge. The school where we had been decided they didn't want to be a polling place anymore. We were fortunate to be able to move to a nearby church hall, but we had to share the space with 2 or 3 other precincts. Now, it's at a different location for this election.

[Klaralven]

3. We went from two schools to one church basement a few years ago.

The church is big enough to accommodate all 6 districts in the town.

And this year I'd expect the traffic to be very light due to mail-in voting.