Sec. 2. Findings

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Congress makes the following findings: The right to vote for all Americans is fundamental and rules for voting and election administration should protect the right to vote and promote voter participation. It is the responsibility of the State and Federal Governments to ensure that every eligible citizen is able to register to vote and to cast a ballot. There continues to be an alarming movement to erect barriers to make it more difficult for Americans to participate in our Nation’s democratic process.

The Nation has witnessed unprecedented efforts to turn back the clock and erect barriers to voting for communities of color, which have faced historic and continuing discrimination, as well as disabled, young, elderly, and low-income Americans. One way voting in communities of color has been suppressed is through long waits at polling locations. Studies have shown a number of contributing factors, including the drastic reduction of early voting days, poor allocation of resources to certain communities, cuts to election funding, and a reduction of polling locations.

A 2019 study led by economist Keith Chen of the University of California, Los Angeles, matched anonymous location data from 10,000,000 smartphones to 93,000 polling places to create the most extensive map to date of voter wait times across the United States. The results showed one very clear disparity: voters in predominantly Black neighborhoods waited 29 percent longer, on average, than those in White neighborhoods. They were also about 74 percent more likely to wait for more than half an hour.

Waiting in long lines discourages people from voting, undermines confidence in the electoral system, and imposes economic costs on voters. Long lines are estimated to have deterred between 500,000 and 700,000 people from casting their ballot in 2012. These problems led to the creation of the bipartisan Presidential Commission on Election Administration, which issued a 2014 report that set forth a standard: No citizen should have to wait more than 30 minutes to vote. . Despite the work of the Presidential Commission on Election Administration, long lines continue, particularly in communities of color where racial discrimination in voting is a clear and persistent problem.

In the Arizona 2016 Presidential primary, in one Maricopa County polling place for mostly Latino voters, some waited for 4 hours or more in the 80-degree heat to cast their ballots. For the 2016 general election, 3 people collapsed while waiting to vote in an hours-long line in Georgia, and a line to vote in Cincinnati, Ohio was a half-mile long. According to a nationwide study, in 2016, roughly 3 percent of people standing in line at voting locations left before they could vote as a result of long lines.

The disenfranchisement that long lines create for voters is not limited to that one election. Research suggests that for each hour would-be voters wait, their probability of voting in the next election drops by 1 percentage point. Congress has the authority under article I, section 4 of the Constitution of the United States to enact laws governing the time, place, and manner of Federal elections. Congress also has authority under section 2 of the 15th Amendment to enforce the right of citizens of the United States to vote, which shall not be denied or abridged by the United States, by legislation.