Many Americans Report Barriers To Voting
With turnout expected to be high this year, many voters who only vote sporadically are likely to cast a ballot. But in our survey with Ipsos that tried to answer why millions of Americans don’t vote, we found that people who voted only some of the time were most likely to have reported barriers to voting, such as they or someone in their household standing in line for more than an hour to vote. They were also likelier than those who always vote to say they’d faced trouble getting time off work to vote, and that they were told their name wasn’t on the list of registered voters.
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These barriers were also experienced differently by race and age. Black respondents were the likeliest to say they’d had to stand in line for more than an hour, and Hispanic respondents were the likeliest to say they couldn’t get off work to vote or weren’t able to access the polling place. Americans under 35 were also much likelier than older Americans to face structural barriers like these, especially when it came to having trouble getting time off work to vote, missing voter registration deadlines, and not receiving absentee ballots in time.