Lower income has to do with it because those are the communities where voting machines always seem to end up in shortest supply. Whether that is deliberate and malevolent or simply a consequence of those jurisdictions having fewer resources.Josh wrote: ↑Mon Nov 27, 2023 10:22 am That's true, although I'm not sure what "lower income" has to do with it. In my state, elections are run at the country level. Funding generally comes from the state as a whole and is distributed to electoral districts based on the number of registered voters in that district. Whether a place is higher or lower income has nothing to do with it.
Election workers are paid uniformly regardless of if they are in the most expensive zip code in the state or the poorest one. There may be varying levels of competence. Perhaps in lower-income areas, the workers aren't as competent and let the machines sit around broken? But I don't see how that's anyone's fault except the workers themselves: they're all paid the same. If anything, the cost of living in lower income areas is lower, so their pay goes farther.
The cavalier attitude you just expressed about it is an example of the problem. It isn't the voters fault that they live in a jurisdiction where elections are run poorly. That would seem to be an argument for more Federal control and oversight. But it is certainly another argument for keeping things simple and low-tech with paper ballots. And if local jurisdictions can't run polling places competently then it is an argument for county and state administered mail-in voting as well.