Photo by ksuzannec

If you felt like you waited a while to vote this year, you did. In fact, you probably waited more than most people throughout the country.

A new report from the Pew Center on the States finds that voters in D.C., Maryland and Virginia waited longer than anyone else to cast ballots this year, spare Florida. While the Sunshine State’s residents waited 44 minutes on average to vote, their counterparts in D.C. stood around for 34 minutes, slightly ahead of Maryland (32 minutes) and Virginia (27 minutes), according to an analysis by MIT professor Charles Stewart:

About one-third of all voters reported they did not wait at all to vote; the average wait time on Election Day clocked in at 13 minutes. (The average was 20 minutes during early voting.)

However, waiting in long lines was quite common in a few states. The identity of the five states whose voters reported the longest lines won’t surprise anyone who paid attention to the news on Election Day. They were Florida (44 average minutes waiting to vote), D.C. (34 min.), Maryland (32 min.), Virginia (27 min.), and South Carolina (27 min.).

This contrasts with the states with the shortest waiting times: Vermont, at 2 minutes, and Maine, Alaska, South Dakota, and Wyoming, all at 4 minutes. While these “fast five” are all small, mostly rural states, it should be noted that the average waiting time in California was 6 minutes, including an average wait time of 3 minutes in Los Angeles County.

Stewart found that on average early voters waited longer than day-of voters, and wait times were higher in urban areas and for African American and Hispanic voters. According to his research, denser areas saw wait times of 19 minutes, compared to six minutes in rural areas. Additionally, black voters could expect 22 minutes and Hispanic voters 18 minutes, higher than what white voters would wait (12 minutes).

Waits up to and exceeding four hours were reported in D.C. when early voting kicked off, mostly because of how voting machines were programmed to handle voters from the ward the center was located in and those from outside of it. Voters in come Virginia counties experienced even longer waits on Election Day, though.

The D.C. Board of Elections is expected to complete its election post mortem by February, but earlier this month a D.C. councilmember criticized the agency’s head for not doing enough to minimize wait times. Three Virginia legislators have introduced bills to remedy the commonwealth’s problems, including measures that would allow online voter registration and early voting.