What causes long lines on Election Day -- and how they can be avoided [View all]

In the November 2022 election, lines at polling places in Ann Arbor, Michigan, spilled out of buildings and down some city streets.

More voters were taking advantage of the opportunity to register and vote on the same day. But the process of registering hundreds of new voters and issuing them absentee ballots had to be done by clerk’s office staff and took up to five minutes per person, leading to waits that were often hours long, City Clerk Jackie Beaudry recounted to Votebeat.

Election officials weren’t willing to let that happen again. So Beaudry, along with other local clerks dealing with similar backups, successfully lobbied lawmakers in Lansing to allow people who register on Election Day to be able to cast regular ballots issued by standard poll workers. In the meantime, voters also approved measures allowing them to vote early in every statewide or federal election, alleviating pressure on Election Day voting.

Those changes cut the time to process each newly registered voter down to almost nothing, Beaudry said, and all but eliminated the city’s long lines in 2024. “I think on Election Day, the longest same-day registration wait was like 15 minutes,” Beaudry said.



https://www.votebeat.org/2026/02/05/how-to-avoid-long-lines-voting-election-day-polling-places/