Access to Polls in Georgia - An Observing Democracy Memo

Georgia Early Vote.jpeg — Observing Democracy Program Memo

December 6, 2020

**Access to the Polls in Georgia: Assessment of Early Vote Wait Times in the General Election and Potential Effects of Voting Restrictions in the Runoff**

Read the Memo

Key Findings

In advance of early voting commencing in Georgia’s runoff election, the Center for New Data’s Observing Democracy program analyzed two large commercially-available geolocation datasets — along with ballot return data and publicly available voter files — to report on wait times during the 2020 General Election. When taken in the context of previously announced early voting polling closures for the runoff, our results indicate that African American and Hispanic voters may be disproportionately affected.

Numbers reported below were produced by a replication of Chen et al’s 2019 NBER paper “Racial Disparities in Voting Wait Times: Evidence from Smartphone Data.”

Key Datasets

Early Voting Ballot Return Data (Georgia Secretary of State Absentee Files)
Voter Demographic Data (L2 Political)
Smartphone Geolocation Data (X-Mode & Veraset)
Polling Locations (Center for Public Integrity & public APIs )

Data Ethics & Privacy

These geolocation datasets are already in widespread commercial use, collected by “opt-in” location settings on mobile devices and used to power everyday services like maps, rideshare, and delivery services.

The Center for New Data does not collect any new data from individuals, nor undertake or support ad targeting in any way.

Early Vote Times Across Georgia

Median Wait Time for Early Voting in Georgia during the 2020 General Election

The plot visualizes vote times by county using the 75th percentile of calculated voting times by county. To distinguish the Atlanta metro area from the rest of the state, Atlanta metro counties are shown in yellow, with non-Atlanta-metro counties in… — The plot visualizes vote times by county using the 75th percentile of calculated voting times by county. To distinguish the Atlanta metro area from the rest of the state, Atlanta metro counties are shown in yellow, with non-Atlanta-metro counties in blue.

Early Vote Times Statewide

Statewide, the average measured vote time in Georgia was 44 minutes.
The top 10 counties with the longest average vote times were: Pickens (82 minutes), Charlton (81 minutes), Harris (81 minutes), Houston (81 minutes), Stephens (81 minutes), Monroe (81 minutes), Clarke (77 minutes), Wilkinson (77 minutes), Laurens (77 minutes), Newton (75 minutes).
The 10 counties with the shortest average vote times were: Wilcox (8 minutes), Atkinson (12 minutes), Taliaferro (12 minutes), Long (14 minutes), Clay (15 minutes), McDuffie (17 minutes), Baker (17 minutes), Rabun (17 minutes), Oglethorpe (17 minutes), Webster (17 minutes).

Early Vote Times Inside and Outside of the Atlanta Metro Area

The counties that comprise the Atlanta metropolitan area had average vote times of: Coweta (74 minutes), Douglas (69 minutes), Cobb (50 minutes), Clayton (49 minutes), DeKalb (47 minutes), Fulton (44 minutes), Henry (43 minutes), Gwinnett (42 minutes), Fayette (41 minutes).
The ten non-metro counties with the highest average vote times were Pickens (82 minutes), Stephens (81 minutes), Charlton (81 minutes), Monroe (80 minutes), Houston (80 minutes), Harris (80 minutes), Clarke (77 minutes), Wilkinson (76 minutes), Laurens (75 minutes), and Newton (75 minutes).

Early Votes Placed on Weekend and at Polls Slated for Closure

The fifty counties with the most in-person early votes cast are charted in descending order. The dots mark the difference between white and African-American share of votes that were cast on weekends.

The fifty counties with the most in-person early votes cast are charted in descending order. The dots mark the difference between white and Hispanic share of votes that were cast on weekends.

Early Vote Activity at Polls Slated for Potential Closure

42 early vote polling locations are marked for closure for the run-off as of 12/8/2020. Those polling locations accounted for more than 223,000 in-person early votes (8.7% of the statewide total).
Of the ten polling locations in Georgia with the highest estimated portion of voters spending longer than 30 minutes on-site, half (five) are slated for closure.
Voters at polling locations slated to close were on-site for an average 49 minutes to vote. In contrast, voters at other polling locations spent on average 43 minutes (~12% shorter vote time).

Weekend Early Voting

264,511 Georgians voted on weekends, accounting for 10% of all GA voters.
In 100 of Georgia’s 159 counties, Hispanic Americans voted on weekends at higher rates (relative to early vote weekday votes) than white voters in the same county.
107 counties showed African Americans voting on weekends at higher rates than voters identifying as white in the same county.
Individuals identifying as white were the least likely to cast their vote on weekends (8.6%), compared to those identifying as Asian (13.1%), African-American (11.8%), and Hispanic (11.4%).
Weekend closures would likely disproportionately burden Georgians with less flexibility around work schedules or other weekday commitments.