Ryan Reilly for HuffPo:

Nearly half of Americans live in precincts where long lines at the voting booth were a problem in the 2012 election cycle, according to a survey conducted by President Barack Obama’s Presidential Commission on Election Administration.

The survey of over 3,000 local elections officials also found that on average, poll workers received far less training than the eight hours most elections experts recommend. First-time workers in smaller jurisdictions received an average of just 2.5 hours of training, while workers in larger jurisdictions received an average of 3.6 hours of training, according to the survey.

“It looks like there’s not a whole lot of training going on, and my question is, what is the quality of that training?” said Charles Stewart, a professor at The Massachusetts Institute of Technology who presented the results of the survey during the commission’s final public hearing on Tuesday.