By the time all the counting is over and the election certification deadline rolls around today, the number of MIAs may be as high as 18,300.
That’s how many Denver voters were likely unable to vote because of long lines, confusion over where to vote, power outages and computer malfunctions.
If the Denver Election Commission’s own estimates are correct, that an estimated 161,699 people voted when 180,000 were expected to vote, it means about 18,300 people in the city were shut out of the democratic process.
Everyone had a story. I waited 2½ hours to vote. (I never got the absentee ballot I requested.) I know someone who went to three voting centers, searching for the short line that didn’t exist.
So imagine the experience for people who work two jobs, or parents who didn’t plan on getting a babysitter for the three hours they’d need, or disabled people.
It’s one thing to walk to a nearby polling place where the wait typically took 30 minutes and another to have to travel to a “voting center.”
On Election Day the people who were most vulnerable to disenfranchisement were – you guessed it – the already disenfranchised.
Poor people who don’t have cars and had to rely on public transportation to get to a voting center only to find long lines and 30 minutes left on their lunch break.
Elderly and physically disabled people who could not stand in a line for two hours.
Parents with children in tow who couldn’t find a parking spot within blocks of the voting center they drove to.
“People who had a one-hour window to vote missed their chance,” said Bill Vandenberg, co-executive director of the Colorado Progressive Coalition, which urged people to vote for the minimum-wage increase.
Vandenberg said he received hundreds of complaints from voters in Northeast and Northwest Denver, in neighborhoods where a majority of the voters are working-class minorities.
Even once computer problems are fixed, the voting center system will continue to disenfranchise people by taking about 350 polling places away from their neighborhoods and replacing them with 55 voting centers.
As one angry person who couldn’t vote wrote on
ididnotgettovote.com, “I want my precinct back!”
Amen.
The website, the creation of Jeff Cook, a 49-year-old independent software programmer, has about 200 postings so far. Cook shared some of those comments with me:
“The line was too long. I am diabetic.”
“The wait was going to be about 4 hours and I could not wait as I had child-care responsibilities. This was the first time in my life that I did not vote.”
“I could not stand more than two hours as I am disabled!”
“I tried two times to vote that day. One time in the morning before work. Second time an hour for lunch combined with my two breaks. I got in line for 45 mins and got nowhere, my time ran out so I had to go back to work. Never got to vote or eat lunch that night.”
Mateos Alvarez, a community organizer for Metro Organizations for People – an organization that works to empower people by connecting them with churches, schools, and community groups – said he received dozens of calls from new citizens who were confused by the process.
“They couldn’t believe it took so long. It’s so much easier in the countries they come from. The assumption is that in the U.S. voting would go much smoother,” he said. He worries that it might turn people off to voting in the future because most of them can’t afford to take half a day of work off to vote.
The city needs to return to precinct voting. To continue using voting centers is to disempower those who have the least amount of clout.
Cindy Rodríguez’s column appears Tuesdays and Sundays. Read Cindy’s blog at denverpostbloghouse.com/rodriguez
Leave a voice message at 303-954-1211 or email her at crodriguez@denverpost.com.
