Very jealous of this Vice News analysis. It finds that about 21,000 Election Day polling places will not be open this year — a 20 percent decrease from the 2016 election. The closure of in-person polling places was a big problem during the primaries this year, leading to long lines in places with the most severe consolidation — often cities and communities of color. The most famous example of this was the Wisconsin primary, when Milwaukee went from 180 polling places to just five and saw hours-long lines as a result.
However, the fact that many states are closing polling places doesn’t automatically mean there will be problems. A lot depends on the exact number of polling places being closed and where they are located (i.e., there is a strategic way to close polling places). Most states are closing fewer than 20 percent of polling places, and assuming those closures are efficiently spread out, that shouldn’t cause too many problems. Some states, like Maryland and Kentucky, will also have voting super centers in large sites like sports arenas that can process many voters at once — so even though there are fewer voting locations, the ones that remain should have higher capacities. And states like California, New Jersey and Vermont are consolidating many polling places but also switching to an all-mail election, so demand for in-person voting should be way down. States like Washington and Colorado that have voted by mail for years typically open only a handful of in-person voting locations and experience few problems.
