Election Updates

By Ted Selker (MIT)

I went to 3 polling places in Cambridge on the day of election. I was awestruck by the organization! In every place clear, huge, and consistent signage led the way to the polling place. In every case, the intake poll book pages were individually laid out without overlapping and taped to a the large intake table, the exit poll book pages were individually laid out without overlapping and taped to the exit table without overlapping. This practice really makes checking off voters easy and transparent. It especially eliminates the ease with which Boston poll workers circumvented the value separate records that make chain voting difficult by not letting a voter leave with a ballot without it being documented in a missing exit poll book entry. In every polling place red white and blue curtains gave voters privacy that is not seen in many polling places. In all places lighting was excellent, in one polling place a bulb hung in each poll booth. Privacy sleeves were used by some voters. The only place I have seen them used consistently was in a polling place in Boston in 2004 where the poll worker handed the voter their ballot in a privacy sleeve.

by Ted Selker (MIT)

During the presidential primary in 2004 a poll worker took the filled out
ballot from my hands to check it (eliminating secrecy in how I voted). I
asked them why they were doing this and they said that they had been told
to turn off the optical scan machine's over-vote detector so they wanted
to make sure that I hadn't voted for two candidates. Turning off the over
vote detector eliminates the optical scan system's approach to second
chance voting. The machine would place such a ballot with two candidates
chosen for president in the bin to be hand read later stopping the voter
from knowing that they should refill out their ballot. I sent the
Secretary of state a complaint note, the over vote detection was turned on
in the next election.

I asked a person at a table on a stage what they were doing. "I am
checking absentee ballots." I asked have you found any problems today,
they said, I found one and erased it (No one should be in a position to
change another's ballot at any time during voting).

This year I voted during early voting November 6, and it went smoothly.
While I was there, a man asked to get a ballot to deliver to his son and
bring back by 4PM. His son was a student at Northeastern University, the
poll worker relented and gave the man a ballot hopefully for his son to
fill out (Absentee ballots are thought to be the largest focus of fraud in
this country).

By Ted Selker (MIT)
I watched one polling place in Brookline. The signage was excellent,
keeping canvassers away. The process inside was very organized with
an airport-like public guidance system. Each polling station had integral
lights and the exit/ scanning area was also well marked.

At some point the polling warden took a box of ballots out of the optical
scan machine. They showed me another box behind everything, full of the
nicely organized ballots they had already taken from the scanning machine.

This practice of having an unsecured ballot box that is constantly being
breached during voting day seems standard where precinct counted optical
scan ballots are mixed with scanning of absentee ballots. The absentee
ballots have folds in them which mess up the stacking of the ballots
inside the machine and the machine cannot hold a full day of ballots. I
have yet to see a polling place that has a secure way of transferring the
ballots from the Diebold optical scanners. At this particular polling
place, the warden took the box of ballots to a back room, another
poll-worker then went back into the room. The polling place warden then
came out, got a ballot marking pen and went to the back room again. They
soon came out with the pen. The other person spent at least 15 minutes
arranging the ballots out of site of supervision. The poll-warden visited
the ballot organizer at least twice during this time. I suspect that
everything was as it should be, putting the 200 or so ballots in the same
orientation. I find it extremely troubling that this must be done and I
don't like it being done without supervision. Without a camera record
made to demonstrate that no marks are added or ballots compromised in such
a process, there is no way to attest that ballots are not being changed.

By Ted Selker (MIT)

This short description documents the variety of practices in Boston that are
worse than surrounding towns and indeed worse than other jurisdictions I have
observed in Nevada, California, Chicago, and New Orleans.

In my next blogs I will describe small problems that can be improved in the
cities of Brookline, Arlington, and Cambridge, Massachusetts

Boston: comparing Nov 2004 and Nov 2006 elections

During the presidential election of 2004, I witnessed active voting at
approximately 30 precincts and watched closing practices at one in Boston.
Observations included a line of 62 people at 7:00AM at the entrance to a
polling place that was actually the entrance to four precincts. The result was
all voters regardless of their particular precinct waited in this line because
one of the polling places checked registration at the entrance, and the other
three precincts had no lines. Although these lines were at the top of at least
a dozen steps, the marking for the polling place was around the back on a door.
We tried to enter the polling place by this more accessible back way and we
found ourselves in a cafeteria; the route to the polling place took us through
an active commercial-style kitchen. After poll workers learned we traversed it,
a poll worker designed and put up signs to help anyone that would vote through
the maze. In doing so, they opened the back door with the polling place sign on
it eliminating any viewable signage of the polling place from the street. The
multiple polling place, single line problem was seen later at other polling
places, with long lines and frustrated voters. Few of the Boston polling places
I visited at that time were accessible. I have detailed this experience in
talks I have given, but will write more about it soon.

During the election of 2006 I witnessed repeats of several problems that I had
witnessed in 2004, many of which were disturbing. At all of the three polling
places I visited, canvassers effectively intimidated voters at the entrance. In
two of them, signs crowded both sides of the entrance gate less than 30 feet
from the polling place entrance surrounded by canvassers. In a third location,
the gate was more seriously crowded by people making the entrance a bit of a
squiggle by them as they shoved literature into your hand. In this polling
place the gate was also the only way to enter the polling place and the
courtyard was about 100 feet walk to the entrance of the building. At one
polling place, I told the canvassers that they were too close, one of them
became angry and told me that she was the past commissioner of elections and
was it bothering me and so on. I approached the polling place warden who asked
me "Is anybody complaining about it" I said I was. The polling place warden
came back from talking to the canvassers and said, "They are upset that you
took their pictures." The placards were not removed, the people were not
removed and the policeman assigned to the polling place began harassing me as I
stood on the street talking to a colleague in California about details of
electronic voting. The policeman became visibly angry, challenged me to take
his badge number and began accusing me of things. I left feeling very
distressed.

In 2004, I watched one polling place in which a uniformed policeman had taken
over the exit poll book checking operation. I also witnessed anther uniformed
policeman who had taken both intake poll book and exit poll book, placed them
on top of each other and was checking off both books when a voter arrived by
himself without supervision. Certainly this compromises the goal of the poll
book. The specter of having to face a uniformed officer upon entrance to a
polling place to vote is not best practices. I am not certain that the police
actually had training in polling place operations. At all three locations that
I observed in 2006, police officers were responsible for the exit poll book in
Boston; I have never seen this in other jurisdictions around the country.

In 2004 at the end of the polling day, I witnessed two poll workers spend more
than 10 minutes working together to compare the intake poll book and exit poll
book with pencils in hand. They obviously erased and changed various records
with these pencils.

In Boston in 2004 I was struck that the precinct scanner was transported with
its counting module in it, making both the voting machine memory and the
secondary memory in the care of the same person who was transporting the
ballots. I also noted that the ballots were in the same color (manilla)
envelopes as the other election materials. I also was struck that all these
materials were transported by an individual policeman who was part of a strike
that demonstrated in front of the Democratic National Convention a few months
earlier. I have not witnessed such sloppy chain of custody anywhere else in my
poll watching.

The this year I had difficulty in getting in touch with and communicating with
Boston's election commission. When we couldn?t get responses with email and
phone calls, I visited. The person that came to talk to me began aggressive.
The commissioner did follow up and sent me a letter of introduction so that I
was credentialed through my poll watching for which I am deeply grateful.

There are many reports in the media regarding apparent problems in Sarasota County's 13th Congressional race, here's one example from the Herald Tribune.

If you look at the current report of results from Sarasota County's election results website, you can see the magnitude of the problem.

My preliminary analysis of the data shows the following (this is preliminary and quick, and I suspect the numbers might change on us).

In the 13th Congressional race, they are reporting 18,382 undervotes (and 1 overvote), of 142,284 total ballots cast. That is an undervote rate of 12.92%, which is pretty darn high.

If you look further into the data, you'll see the following:

1. Election day: 12,378 undervotes of 88,927 total election day ballots cast (13.92% undervote rate).
   
2. Early voting: 5,433 undervotes of 30,832 total early votes cast (17.62% undervote rate).
   
3. Absentee: 571 undervotes (and the one overvote!) of 22,525 total absentee ballots cast (2.53% undervote rate).
   

But compare to the Governor and Lieutenant Governor's race:

1. Election day: 1,249 undervotes of 88,927 total election day ballots cast (1.40% undervote rate).
   
2. Early voting: 416 undervotes of 30,832 total early votes cast (1.35% undervote rate).
   
3. Absentee: 156 undervotes (and 15 overvotes) of 22,525 total absentee ballots cast (0.69% undervote rate).
   

My understanding is that Sarasota used a touchscreen voting system for election day and early voting, but optical scan for their absentee voters.

And in neighboring Manatee County, which also had the CD 13 race, they are now reporting 2,312 blank ballots in this same race, of 96,705 votes cast (2.39% undervote rate). My understanding is that Manatee County used a optical scan system.

One suspect here is poor ballot design on the touchscreen voting system used in Sarasota County. MIT's Ted Selker emailed me this screenshot of the touchscreen for this race; note that the CD 13 race is jammed up at the top of the screen, and might simply have been overlooked by many voters. I have no idea whether all voters in Sarasota saw this same screen. Another issue here, which you can see in

No, says Kim Brace (Election Data Services) in this morning's Rocky Mountain News:

"Is it a surprise? No," said Kimball Brace, president of Washington, D.C.-based Election Data Services, a consulting firm specializing in election administration.

"Is it unfortunate? Yes."

Brace said he talked to top Denver Election Commission officials Tuesday afternoon after hearing about computer problems causing voter lines to snake out to the sidewalks.

"Our advice is always be careful that you're not biting off too much," Brace said.

"Denver might have bitten off too much at once with the new voting centers and new electronic voting machines. When you throw that together all at the same time, it's not surprising what happened."

Bob Stein (Rice University) also expressed a similar sentiment in the same story:

t will take weeks to fully understand what went wrong, said Robert Stein, dean of Rice University's School of Social Sciences who has studied Colorado's vote center trend and has met with Denver election officials in the past.

"I was shocked when I heard Denver was adopting this," Stein said.

Stein said the clerk in Harris County, Texas, where he lives, said vote centers wouldn't work in large cities because it would be too difficult to bring large numbers of people to central locations to vote.

But Stein is not convinced it is impossible.

"It's not clear it has failed," he said.

It does should from what I've read and heard so far that Denver put themselves in a difficult situation; as Thad and I have argued frequently over the years, election officials should start small, experiment, and learn from pilot projects before trying to implement large-scale and extensive changes in election administration. It sounds at this point that this might be the lesson from Denver's experiences on Tuesday.

The Waterbury Connecticut Republican American newspaper offers this story, "Voting machines hardest on poll workers." The story reported:

"The voting went just fine," said Litchfield's Democratic Registrar Marie H. Wallace, "but our people are complaining about the paperwork. It's just too much."

A welter of new and sometimes-confusing instructions, plus extensive reporting requirements from each town using the optical scan machines, delayed the final tally from some towns. Litchfield registrars worked into the night and Wednesday to compile vote totals. One holdup came from confusion about how to close and lock the computerized scanner after the polls closed.

Part of the overload was caused by an unexpectedly high turnout in many municipalities. A near-constant line formed outside the Litchfield Fire House over the 14-hour voting period. Salisbury, another town using the new technology, reported the highest number of voters ever for a midterm election.

...

Ironically, Connecticut's biggest technical problem in Tuesday's election was a human error involving the old lever machines in West Hartford. It was discovered shortly after the polls opened there that two machines listed the wrong names for candidates running for state representative in the 18th District.

The problem was corrected, but 28 votes were nullified as a result.

The current edition of The Economist has a story, "Often voting early: Why election day no longer means what it did." The story has some very good quotes from Paul Gronke, setting the context for what will be some very interesting research to come out after this election, when more data becomes available as to how extensive early and abstentee voting was in 2006, and who took advantage of early and absentee voting opportunities (and who voting in the precincts).

Something on the lighter side from Charlotte, NC: Dead man elected to Union office

I've been lauding the Oregon elections system this year, since they begin to count ballots so early (12:01 AM) and because only 15% of ballots (on average) come in on election day.

Nothing like being proved wrong by facts! A surge in last minute turnout has meant that 10% of the by mail ballots in Oregon have yet to be counted.

Oregon vote slow, last-minute ballots blamed

From the Arizona Republic: Proposition 205, which would have instituted statewide voting by mail for all elections, lost 72% - 28%.

The LA Times is reporting that the Nguyen letter, in the 47th Congressional District in Orange County (CA), might have actually stimulated some voters to get out to vote yesterday. It'll be interesting to follow up on voter participation in this race to see if there is any evidence one way or the other regarding how this letter, aimed at depressing Latino voter turnout, had an effect on voter participation, especially among Latino voters.

Here is what the Denver Post said about the election yesterday:

Obviously, the first major test of Denver's new "vote centers" fell somewhere between a disaster and a fiasco. Just ask the thousands of voters who waited for hours in long, snaking lines at many of the 55 centers around the city. And the undetermined number who got fed up and left without voting.

It was no picnic in Douglas County, either, where some voters endured horrendous lines, but Denver's mess seemed on a scale of its own. Ironically, many of the 24 machines at any given Denver vote center were idle much of the time. In fact, shortly after 10 a.m. at the Wellington Webb Building, no machines were in use even though 150 people were waiting. "The computers are down," said an election official. The problem was checking in, not voting. Everyone had to be checked against the central "electronic poll book" that kept records for every registered elector in the city.

Yesterday, a group monitored New Mexico precincts in Santa Fe, Bernalillo and Dona Ana Counties. We'll eventually have much more to say about our observations and our recommendations on how New Mexico can improve their voting process.

The biggest story concerned a lack of ballots in two Bernalillo precincts, which we did get monitors to in the late afternoon. Here is what is now in the Santa Fe New Mexican on the two ballots that lacked ballots:

In the Bernalillo County ballot snafu, clerks originally were told they'd get enough ballots for all registered voters, but were notified last week that the numbers were reduced based on absentee and early voting, Herrera said. She said her office complained that cutting back was a bad idea.

A spokesman for Vigil-Giron told The Albuquerque Tribune that insufficient ballots in two Bernalillo County precincts apparently resulted from a dropped zero. Precincts that should have received 1,500 and 1,700 ballots received 150 and 170, respectively.

According to this story, ballots were available in these precincts within two hours.

When we were able to get to these two precincts, they did have ballots ... but lines were long. We timed the wait from arrival to deposit of ballot in the voting box at approximately 35 minutes during the worst of the waiting.

The exits from yesterday's elections asked voters a question, on their confidence that votes will be counted accurately. According to the data now available, 87% said they were confident, 12% were not confident. 73% of those who said they were not confident were Democrats, 25% of those who were not confident were Republicans.

At this point, with with 96% of precincts reporting, Proposition 200, the Arizona Voter Rewards Act, has 66% voting against the measure, 34% in favor.

Pittsburgh news reports that the Republican State Committee has contacted the Secretary of State requesting that some voting machines be impounded. Read more...

Mike will of course blog about his experiences in Santa Fe and Albuquerque, but to get things started...news reports indicate that the new paper ballot system used this election presented few problems.

In Orange County, CA problems arose resulting in some interesting attempts in problem-solving.

Long waits, broken machines at some O.C. polling places: Some voters in Irvine and Garden Grove say they left without casting their ballots.

Official results may not be available in Franklin County, OH until Nov 18, due to a record number of provisional ballots and unexpected slowdowns with counting machines. Read more...

Here are some news stories documenting voter turnout across the country

Lake County, IN: 'Hotly contested races fueling voter turnout'
Seattle, WA: 'Area poll workers report good turnout'
Salinas, CA: 'Voter Turnout Low in Monterey County'
Santa Ana, CA:' Voter turnout at 20%'
Lansing, MI: 'Voter Turnout Higher Than Expected'
Topeka, KS: 'Mid-afternoon voter turnout at 34%'
Richmond, VA: 'Voter turnout extremely high'
Asheville, NC: 'Rain, few high-profile races lead to low turnout Tuesday morning'
St. Paul, MN: 'Governor's race, marriage issue could boost Wis. voter turnout'
Columbia, SC.: 'Heavier SC voter turnout surprises poll workers'
Nashville, TN: 'Tight Senate Race Produces High Voter Turnout'
Philadelphia, PA: 'Voters come out in droves, fueled by Iraq'
Sarasota, FL: 'Rain dampers voter turnout, Scientists say'
Boston, MA: 'Voter turnout' ("We're making history")
Albany, NY: 'Voter turnout in New York is moderate'
Washington DC: 'Voter turnout strong in US vote: Absentee voting at record level'

Just one more set of observations from the excellent Election Incident Reporting System, before I head off to election night parties.

Last time, I blogged about how it would he helpful to adjust these figures by population size or number of jurisdiction; essentially, make them into "per capita" (or per voter or per jurisdiction) measures.

It's also critical that any user of the system click through to the county level. For instance, let's take the three "red" states on this map: California, Pennsylvania, and Ohio.

California currently sits at > 250 incidents. But more than half the incidents are from one county: Los Angeles. Otherwise, California looks to be conducting a relatively unprobematic election, at least according to this website.

Pennsylvania similarly reports two counties with a high level of incidents: Philadelphia and Allegheny (not surprisingly, the two most populous counties in the state).

Ohio, in contrast, also falls into the > 250 incidents category, but four separate counties (Franklin, Cuyahoga, Hamilton, and Montgomery) show greater than 70 incidents.

NPR gives an overview of the numerous precincts affected by electronic voting issues in the state of Indiana. This resulted in an extension of voting hours (1 hr 45 mins) Read or listen.

CNN reported the results of an exit poll question they commissioned about confidence. It shows that a vast majority of Americans are confident that their ballot will be counted accurately.

1% - Other

The election must be going OK when this is the complaint voters have (from the Chicago Sun-Times:

But in suburban Cook County, problems were limited, said Gail Siegel, a spokeswoman for the county clerk's office.

Two precincts opened late and sporadic problems were reported with machines. But the most frequent complaint was a lack of pens to fill in paper ballots, she said.

''People just want more pens. People walk off with them, or one or two of them are dried out,'' she said. ''While we're not going to have a perfect election day, we do see it as a vast improvement over March.''

Forbes.com posted a brief synopsis of some of the potentially problematic polling locations (regarding voting equipment and post-election procedures), focusing on Maryland, Missouri and Ohio. Tova Wang is also quoted in the article. Read more

It's all the rage--several news outlets and websites are providing a service to voters on their websites to share their Election Day experiences. Here are some that I've come across:

• CNN
• Columbus, OH NBC news affiliate (I blogged this earlier today)
• VoterStory.org (Funders' Committee for Civic Participation)
• RockyMountainNews.com (Colorado)
  

In South Carolina, Governor Mark Sanford was turned away from the polls because he forgot his voter identification card! The poll manager stuck to his guns and required that the governor return with his state-issued voter ID card if he wished to vote. Read more

ABC channel 7 reports on electronic voting in San Mateo and Alameda counties. A precinct in Redwood City reports that voters are liking their experience with the E-Slate machine. There are a total of 472 of the machines being used in the county, but only using one machine per precinct and paper scanning ballots for the rest. Read more

Voters experiencing long lines and problems with electronic voting machines. Some voters were unable to cast a vote in Fort Bend County because the polling location had the wrong machines. And if the results are within the number of votes unable to be cast there may be a problem because there is no provision to provide an alternative ballot style. Read more

The Chicago Sun Times reported this afternoon that the biggest complaint in suburban Cook County was a lack of pens needed to fill in paper ballots. Lack of pens!

I just discovered the downloadable data from EIRS: https://voteprotect.org/index.php?display=EIRMapNation&tab=ALL. The data available is for 2005, but presumably 2006 data will become accessible sometime after the election.

I'm back from a morning of teaching, and the incident reports are piling up. Kudos to Tova, Rick, Ned, Dan, Doug, and others for keeping this on an even keel. It's hard not to say "I told you so."

I just looked at Tova Wang's incident reporting system (here)--the main site for the system is the Voter Protection Center (https://voteprotect.org/). The map is useful as a tracking device, but hopefully these data will be made public after the election, so we can adjust some of these figures by the number of voters, precincts, types of machines, etc.

So it's no accident that California--as the most populous state--has one of the highest numbers of reported incidents. The issue is going to be whether certain combinations of poll worker training, machines, and electoral environments lead to a higher or lower level of reported incidents.

At 2.40pm (EST) Western Pennsylvania reported that their voting machines were fully functional, after experiencing problems upon opening the polls. 20 machines failed out of 4600 and most of the problems that were called in to thee county elections board were easily solved over the phone.
Officials site pollworker training issues as a major cause of the problems. Read more...

When we were working on the Cuyahoga County incident reports from the May primary election, Rod Kiewiet at Caltech coined the phrase "Voters Gone Wild" for the crazy things that voters do in the election. (Our favorite that kept happening: voters upset they had to declare a party preference to vote in a partisan primary election!)

Well, it is early, but I think we have a winner in this election's voter gone wild contest from this article in the Chicago Tribune (we blogged about the winning poll worker earlier)......

A man who reportedly believed Republicans were conspiring to steal today's election entered an Allentown polling site, signed in and proceeded to smash the screen of one of the electronic voting machines with a metal cat paperweight, poll volunteers said. Michael Young, 43, of 375 Auburn St., will be charged with felony criminal mischief and tampering with voting machines, according to Ronald Manescu, chief of investigations for Allentown police.

Police gave no motive, but a source said Young, a registered Independent, believed Republicans had conspired to win the election by using electronic ballots. This is the first time electronic machines are being widely used in a Pennsylvania general election.

"He smashed it with the cat's ears," said volunteer Jim Govostis, who watched the incident unfold at Raker Center, a nursing home owned by Good Shepherd, around 12:30 p.m. Young, who brought the paperweight with him, then sat down, hung his head and waited for police, who arrested him without incident.

"He came in here very peaceably and showed his ID," said volunteer Gladys Pezoldt, "then he got on the machine and just snapped…He was immediately remorseful. When the police came, he got up, turned around and put his hands behind his back."

Here is another story on voting in Denver. Even candidates got caught up in the lines.

Scattered computer problems and the longest ballot in decades created big backups outside some polling places Tuesday as Coloradans voted on key offices and hot-button social issues.

Up to 300 people stood in line at Denver sites. At one, Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter waited an hour and 40 minutes to vote.

This is an interesting story from the Milwaukeee Journal Sentinal about an optical ballot scanner breaking. Note what they did with the ballots!

Reports of voting problems were sprouting like crabgrass. By 9 a.m., reports of broken machines were heard from Maryland Avenue School on the city's east side, at the Beulah Brinton Community Center in Bay View and at 82nd Street School on the northwest side.

Said Robert Kofler, a voter at the 82nd Street School:

"The voting machine stopped working after accepting only one ballot. Poll workers there had no clue as to what to do when the machine broke. They had us place all ballots in a pile and then said that they would process them when the machine is fixed. Was this right to do this? I do not know. Seems very wrong to me."

"Long ballot, new machines, computer problems slow voting"
'Scattered computer problems and the longest ballot in decades created big backups outside some polling places Tuesday as Coloradans voted on key offices and hot-button social issues.' ...

"Missouri elections official improperly asked for ID"
'She warns of potential problems though court struck down requirement.'

The Columbus, OH NBC affiliate is asking voters to share their voting experiences on their website.

More voters voting by paper ballots.

'Machines cut off candidates' last names and registert the wrong selections'
-RedHerring.com

Watch the Cincinati news report.

Link to roundup of poll problems at today's polls.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. -- A poll worker was arrested Tuesday and charged with assault and interfering with an election for allegedly choking a voter and pushing the voter out the door, an official said.

Election officials called police, and the voter wanted to file charges, said Paula McCraney, a spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Clerk.

"That about tops off the day," McCraney said.

It wasn't immediately clear what sparked the altercation. The name of the poll worker was not released and a Louisville police spokesman did not immediately return calls seeking comment.

According to the Denver Post, there is a pretty extensive voter registration problem in Denver. Here is the story:

Democratic party leaders are planning to seek a two-hour extension for voting in Denver, due to massive computer problems which have created long lines, and kept many from casting their vote. Party spokesman Brian Mason said a motion is being prepared, in response to "the huge problems in Denver this morning." The problems began right at 7 a.m. as computer problems at the voter-check in stations bogged down, creating a bottleneck in the first hour of voting as a rush to the polls overloaded the system. Shortly after 8 a.m., election judges reported better service and lines began moving.

Mark Coles, a computer technician with the Denver Election Commission, said the election system had to be split onto three separate servers to handle the backlog. "It's just like traffic on (Interstate) 25," Coles said. "It's as if we are building two more I-25s right next to it" to ease the traffic congestion. But the fix did not come in time to help some voters who hoped to vote before heading to work.

At Denver Botanic Gardens, more than 200 voters backed up in a line that stretched out of the gates and down the block more than half way to 11th Avenue. "We will not get to vote today," said a frustrated Lauren Brockman as he left the Botanic Gardens. He lined up at 6:45 a.m. hoping to beat the rush, only to stand in line for close to an hour before leaving. But an hour wait was short, compared to some. At Corona Presbyterian Church, voters were being told to expect about a two-hour wait as they snaked around the building.

"All my friends, I told them to vote between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.," said Rob Weil the election judge supervisor at Corona. "But if it keeps being this slow, this line will stay." Several people left the line at Park Hill Methodist Church after they were told equipment was broken. But shortly after that, the line was moving again.

Despite the early trouble, election commission spokesman Alton Dillard said lines were running smoothly by 9 a.m. "Everything is back up and running," he said. "If a voter goes somewhere with a long line, all they have to do is check in with an election official and see where there is a vote center with less traffic."

As you all have no doubt heard, the encoders for the Diebold machines in Utah County, Utah (which is the county south of Salt Lake City and home of BYU) had problems with their polls opening because the encoder cards had problems. I was down there at 8:45 and everything was under control. In each precinct, the poll workers had turned one machine into an encoder and they actually liked using the machine as an encoder better because it was easier than using the hand encoders. There were relatively short lines--10 or 12 people--and things were moving slowly. Given that Utah County has only three full time election staff for a county with over 115,000 registered voters, they did a very good job recovering from this problem.

There were problems associated with poll workers asking voters to come back later, as opposed to having the voters cast a provisional ballot. However, the machines are all back up and running now.

Check out Tova's Blog. It has great insights on the elections as seen from the Election Protection world.

Here are links to a set of stories about problems at the polls.
From AP:

Programming errors and inexperience dealing with electronic voting machines frustrated poll workers in hundreds of precincts early Tuesday, delaying voters in Indiana, Ohio and Florida and leaving some with little choice but to use paper ballots instead.

In Cleveland, voters rolled their eyes as election workers fumbled with new touchscreen machines that they couldn't get to start properly until about 10 minutes after polls opened. "We got five machines — one of them's got to work," said Willette Scullank, a trouble shooter from the Cuyahoga County, Ohio, elections board.

In Indiana's Marion County, about 175 of 914 precincts turned to paper because poll workers didn't know how to run the machines, said Marion County Clerk Doris Ann Sadler. She said it could take most of the day to fix all of the machine-related issues. Election officials in Delaware County, Ind., planned to seek a court order to extend voting after an apparent computer error prevented voters from casting ballots in 75 precincts there. County Clerk Karen Wenger said the cards that activate the machines were programmed incorrectly.

Here is a great story about the use of e-Slates, which ARE NOT TOUCHSCREEN!

Last May, Lancaster County voting officials declared themselves pleased with the new eScan and eSlate voting machines used for the first time in the primary election.

But in today’s general election, things didn’t work quite so smoothly. As of 10:30 this morning, 57 out of the county’s 275 eScan machines — the “paper ballot” machines — were malfunctioning. That’s about 21 percent. The machines are in polling places throughout the county. As a result, county officials decided by late morning to keep all the county’s 232 polling places open until 9 p.m. The problem was twofold, according to Mary Stehman, the head of the county election bureau.

Long Lines, Voting Machine Problems Reported Across State
'A flood of election-related calls knocked out the phone system serving Franklin County offices on Tuesday morning...'

"FBI looking into possible Virginia voter intimidation"
'Officials probing reports of phone calls allegedly intended to confuse voters'

Voting Problems crop up early on Election Day
'Complaints in Fla., Ind., Ohio, as workers tangle with new machines, rules'
"Programming errors and inexperience dealing with electronic voting machines frustrated poll workers in hundreds of precincts early Tuesday, delaying voters in Indiana, Ohio and Florida and leaving some with little choice but to use paper ballots instead." ....

Problems Make Voters Uneasy About Marion County Ballots
"Democrats said they might go to court to force polls in Marion County to stay open late after complaints about machines not working at dozens of precincts Tuesday morning" ...

Delaware County Polls To Be Open Late After Problems
"Polls will be open until 8.40 pm Tuesday in Delaware County, where voters were not able to cast their votes early in the morning because of problems at all of the county's precincts"...

There are several places where there have been problems. What is interesting is what is defined as a "machine problem." For example:

In Marion County, Indiana's largest, paper ballots had to be used in more than 100 of the 914 precincts where touch-screen machines were not working. The problem is that poll workers have forgotten how to start and run the machines, said Marion County Clerk Doris Ann Sadler.

Since when is a poll worker's inability to turn on a voting machine equal to a machine not working? The machine works fine; the poll workers were either poorly trained or given poor instructional information about how to start the machines. Here in Utah, I have seen both the training and the in-precinct help materials and this problem would not happen here, where there has been a large investment in training.

If you want to know why there will be long lines and such on election day, read this story from Orange County. If the ballot takes 10 minutes to vote because there are a million things on it, we should expect to have long lines. After all, we are the ones who insist on voting on everything under the sun.

Here are some early problems that have been reported, as well as stories about things being smooth. (By the way, often the best media for this are television station websites, which publish very small but interesting stories).

Indiana: One early problem was reported in Delaware County, however, where an apparent computer error prevented voters from casting ballots in 75 precincts. Election officials plan to seek a court order to extend the voting beyond the scheduled 6:00 deadline. Delaware County Clerk Karen Wenger says start cards that activate the machines for voters were programmed incorrectly by the company that installed the software. She says technicians are working with precincts one-by-one over the telephone to get the problem fixed.

Cuyahoga County, Ohio: The world hasnt ended, according to WKYC.

Miami, Florida seems to be doing OK as well. Accompanied by a final wave of campaigning, South Florida polling places generally opened on time and without sweeping problems this morning -- though a few, inevitable glitches were reported.

In Broward County, voters at two precincts experienced brief delays because electronic ballots were delivered to the wrong places. Electronic cartridges programmed for a precinct at the Lauderdale Lakes Yacht Club at 2637 Whale Harbor Ln. in Fort Lauderdale were erroneously swapped with ballots destined for the Andrew DeGraffenreidt Community Center at 2750 NW 19th St., election officials said. Workers quickly corrected the problem, and by 7:26 a.m., a computer-generated map at the Broward Emergency Operations Center in Plantation showed all 776 precincts up and running.

Mike made reference to my hatred of that phrase in his earlier post. The reason it annoys me is that it is a meaningless thing to say. It is like saying at a sporting event "It all comes down to who scores the most points." The whole point of an election is to turnout more voters for your candidate and shockingly, whoever turns out 50 percent plus 1 voters wins!

Katy Human has a very nice article on glitches that arose in absentee voting in Colorado in today's Denver Post.

Workers slid absentee ballots into two counting machines at the Denver Election Commission headquarters Monday morning, overseen by stuffed versions of the troublemaking Dr. Seuss characters Thing One and Thing Two. Thing One sat on a machine counting ballots that had "no" printed where "yes" should have been on Referendum F, which has to do with recall election rules. Thing Two sat on the other optical scanner, counting the correctly printed ballots.

In several of Colorado's counties Monday, elections officials and voters reported small glitches, but nothing unusual for the day before Election Day, they said.

In Pueblo County, officials responded to allegations that thousands of absentee ballots hadn't been sent to voters who requested them. In Jefferson County, officials were copying about 2,000 absentee ballots because of mistakes voters made marking them. In Arapahoe, Denver and Pueblo counties, trainers reminded election judges about preventing fraud on computerized voting machines made by Sequoia Voting Systems.

Jefferson County election director Susan Miller said that people made a lot of mistakes marking absentee ballots, probably because the ballot is so long this year. "People are resting their pens on the paper, and it's bleeding through and counts as a vote," Miller said. "Our equipment is very sensitive - it kicks those out and makes a human look at it." Other voters have written notes on their ballots, she said, indicating who they intended to vote for after multiple cross-outs. Those ballots must also be copied and fed through scanners, Miller said. Such "duplication" of ballots is done in front of witnesses, she said.

That's one of Thad's favorite phrases --- and I'm sure we'll hear more from him today after he hears it a few thousand times!

But back to serious business about voter turnout, there are reports this morning of some very significant weather problems in both the Northwest and the Southeast. Flooding is expected in Oregon and Washington, but given that the reliance in those states on early and absentee voting, these weather problems may not be as important an issue in making it difficult for people to get to the polls as in the Southeast. Showers are also expected in the mid-Atlantic states, and throughout the Ohio valley.

It's beautiful --- but chilly --- here in Santa Fe. Off to start our day in New Mexico, starting here in Santa Fe, and then heading south to Albuquerque.

Seeing that we had four times our normal traffic on Monday, I expect there will be many of you are also visiting us on Election Day. We will be doing posts throughout the day from New Mexico (where Mike is today), Utah (where I am), from Portland (home of Paul Gronke) and Pasadena, where Melissa Slemin at Caltech will be helping out. Visit throughout the day for updates.

They've begun counting the absentee ballots in many East Coast states and the polls are opening in seven hours. Here we go!

Thad was on KCPW today, talking about Internet voting in Estonia.

Rachel Konrad of the AP has this story circulating today, noting that the EAC is poised to implement stronger scrutiny of voting systems, but in January 2007.