Moving polling places

[Pam Karlan]

At 05:30 PM 9/23/2003 -0700, Eastman, John wrote:

***

As for disparaging the precious right to vote -- I did not such thing.
I disparaged those who somehow think the extra couple of blocks would
block them from exercising what is truly a precious right (not to
mention basic obligation of citizenship).  Yes, I'm a law professor, and
can often take the afternoon to go vote if I want.  But I also run a
constitutional litigation center, and am often traveling, thousands of
miles from my polling place.  That distance has NEVER prevented me from
voting, even before California liberalized its absentee voting
requirements.  So I don't have much sympathy with the claim that moving
the polling place a few blocks will "disenfranchise" voters.

I'm not an expert on how California selects polling places (from my casual understanding, it's pretty random and haphazard), but I did litigate some voting rights cases in the late 1980's in which that issue was quite important.  In one case, we showed that when polling places in minority neighborhoods were moved, particularly for runoff elections (which are, after all, elections that occur on dates other than the traditional election day), minority turnout declined significantly.  And in another case, litigated by some colleagues, it turned out that minority polling places were sometimes moved to places that were extremely inconvenient -- for example, to a location on the other side of a limited-access highway that required pedestrians to walk a substantial distance to get to an overpass.  That's a problem for elderly voters, voters who have to take small kids with them, and voters without access to a vehicle.  (In fact, in 1980's Voting Rights Act cases, we often introduced evidence of telephone usage and car ownership as what political scientists called "politically salient resources," because they were so important to mobilization and turnout).

        In  Perkins v. Matthews, 400 U.S. 379, 387-88 (1971), the Supreme Court held that changes in polling places within so-called "covered jurisdictions" -- which includes four counties here in California with substantial minority populations -- require federal approval under the preclearance provisions of seciton 5 of the Voting Rights Act.  The Court explained:

        "The abstract right to vote means little unless the right becomes a reality at the  polling place on election day.  The accessibility, prominence, facilities, and prior notice of the  polling place's location all have an effect on a person's ability to exercise his franchise. Given @ 5's explicit concern with both the purpose and the effect of a voting "standard, practice, or procedure," the location of  polling places comes within the section's coverage. Moreover, the legislative history provides ample support for the conclusion that Congress intended @ 5 to cover a change in polling places.  Before the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Attorney General explicitly testified that "a change in the place of registration" ... [involved] changes of the kind that @ 5 was designed to reach. Plainly the relocation of the polling places is precisely the same kind of change.  Moreover, there inheres in the determination of the location of  polling places an obvious potential for "denying or abridging the right to vote on account of race or color." Locations at distances remote from black communities or at places calculated to intimidate blacks from entering, or failure to publicize changes adequately might well have that effect.  Consequently, we think it clear that @ 5 requires prior submission of any changes in the location of  polling places."


So I have a lot more sympathy for the claim that moving a polling place can make voting far more difficult for voters.

Pamela S. Karlan
Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law
Stanford Law School
559 Nathan Abbott Way
Stanford, CA 94305-8610
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
650.725.4851