When a Boston precinct was having trouble with voting, they called Steve Ansolabehere, PhD ’89, Harvard’s Frank G. Thompson Professor of Government and the director of the University’s Center for American Political Studies. The problem at the South Boston school where citizens cast their ballots was long lines. If that sounds trivial, consider that waiting in line, along with inconvenient voting hours and polling locations, may have discouraged an estimated 730,000 people from voting in 2012, according to a white paper that Ansolabehere and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s (MIT) Charles Stewart III submitted to the US Election Assistance Commission in 2013. The opportunity cost of lost wages was an estimated $544 million.
Ansolabehere called Stewart and his MIT colleague Stephen Graves, an expert in operations management. The trio arrived at the school, looked around, and sized up the problem.
“Two precincts were voting in one location,” Ansolabehere remembers. “One precinct was large; the other was small. The first table you encountered when you entered was for the small precinct, so the line was out the door with people who needed to vote at the large one. Precinct signs were taped low to the tables so most people couldn’t see them. We suggested they put the large precinct at the first table and post the signs up high. The problem went away.”
Steve Ansolabehere would be the first to admit that the solutions to many of the challenges facing US democracy are not as simple as the ones he encountered on that day in South Boston. The notion that the 2020 election was “stolen” has become an article of faith for politicians on the right. On the left, there are concerns about voter suppression, particularly in the wake of the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision to strike down a portion of the landmark Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965. But Ansolabehere says US elections are both more secure and fairer than their most strident critics contend. Moreover, just as with the polling station he and his MIT colleagues visited, some relatively straightforward, practical changes could translate into big improvements both in access and election integrity.
