Voters in St. Louis can now track wait times at polling places before casting their ballots on Election Day using a website launched Monday.
During early voting and on Nov. 5, the map will show real-time line counts at the polls.
The interactive map is part of an effort to modernize election operations, said Ben Borgmeyer, the city’s Democratic elections director. Borgmeyer said that he doesn’t expect the tool will lead to higher voter turnout, but that it will allow for an easier voting experience.
“If [we] can see a place that has a line around the block, the idea would be to try to get more resources there to try to manage it better,” Borgmeyer said.
St. Louis County launched its widely used line tracker map in 2020, and since then, Borgmeyer has been focused on bringing the tool to the city and “catching up with the county.”
Eric Fey, St. Louis County’s Democratic elections director, said the real-time map benefits voters and the election board.
“We have people that will refresh that thing for hours, waiting until lines get short enough to where they're liking to go to a particular place,” Fey said.
Prior to using the line tracker, Fey said the county had to rely on workers at each polling location to call election officials about long lines or ballot printing issues.
“Or even worse, what we don't like is, you know, voters call and say, ‘Hey, there's a problem at this place. You guys should go deal with this.’ Of course we will, but we prefer to try to figure those things out before voters have to start complaining to us,” Fey said.
On Election Day, Fey said officials will monitor the map, which is periodically updated by poll workers at each location, to quickly identify problems and send one of nearly 100 troubleshooters to solve it.
Given the heightened national scrutiny of elections and increased intimidation of election officials in recent years, Fey said newer mapping technology and better outreach efforts like tours of election offices can help restore trust in the system.
Both the city and the county election boards work with Esri, a company that supplies geographic information systems to power the mapping service. The technology is used to create, analyze and map data such as polling places and election results.
Many election officials in the U.S. are using the GIS technology to accurately redraw districts, verify voter registrations and ensure voters are given the right ballots. More election boards are expected to adopt the mapping technology in the next three years, according to a 2022 report from the National States Geographic Information Council.
While geospatial software remains expensive and highly specialized, its use is now more widespread because people look to maps to better understand politics and the world around them, said Peter Kastor, a professor of history at Washington University in St. Louis
“Most people are not data scientists. They don't know how to look at a column of numbers and draw meaning from them,” Kastor said.
Kastor, who first used computer mapping technology in 1990 in his work with a U.S. Department of Justice division that enforces the Voting Rights Act, said many more people are now familiar with location-based technology.
“Now we have an entire generation of people who've grown up thinking geospatial. They've seen Google Maps. They've seen Google Earth. They use mapping devices on their phones,” Kastor said.
The county’s Board of Elections employs three GIS specialists; the city’s Board of Election Commissioners relies on help from GIS experts who work under the city’s Panning and Urban Design Agency.
Borgmeyer said he hopes to use more GIS technology throughout the election process, including publishing maps that display voter turnout numbers and election results. St. Louis currently only releases election results in a table format.
