Elections in the News

11:20 E.T. Summary

This is a collection of some of the voting technology (and other) problems we’ve seen up to the moment:

  • Florida: “Reports that ballots were missing from polls in Tallahassee.”
  • Illinois (Chicago): “The touchscreen machine at the Club Lucky bar and restaurant was on the blink. That meant voters had to use paper ballots. Voting was slowed on the South Side when there weren’t enough pens to mark ballots. A Chicago official also reports that three election judges didn’t show up, so he had to recruit volunteers from among voters standing in line.”
  • Indiana (Indianapolis): “The voting machines weren’t working, so voters had to manually feed their ballots into the machine. (…) the machines were fixed by 7:30 a.m.”
  • Indiana (Lake): “Two machines were down for about 15 minutes when the polling place opened. Both machines are up and running now.”
  • Missouri (Kansas City): 3 hours wait because “precincts had received the wrong voter registration lists.”
  • New Jersey (Willingboro, Burlington): “Voters needed to use paper ballots because of mechanical problems with electronic voting machines”. For more on Willingboro check out this link.
  • New York (Broome): “New voting machine already has two votes.”
  • New York (Stapleton): In one voting machine “the lever for Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama jammed. Both problems were fixed and voting resumed as usual around 7 a.m.”
  • North Carolina (Raleigh): “One polling place couldn’t open at 6:30 a.m. because its chief judge left the precinct’s ballots in her grandson’s pickup when he dropped her off.”
  • North Carolina (Wake): “Some paper optical-scan ballots got wet.”
  • Ohio (Kenton): “Voting machine malfunctions at a precinct in Kenton County have caused elections officials to go before a judge.”
  • Ohio (Shaker Heights): “The first few voters at one precinct received ballots that were missing the presidential race.”
  • Pennsylvania (Philadelphia): “Problems with voting machines not working in eight of 1,681 election divisions throughout the city (…) where machines have gone down, voters have been allowed to vote on emergency ballots.”
  • Virginia: “Polling places not opening on time.”
  • Virginia (Chesapeake): “Approximately 1,000 people had to stand in line to vote, and some people reported malfunctioning machines.”
  • Virginia (Richmond and Fairfax): “Polling places had to switch to paper ballots because of machine malfunctions.” For more on Richmond, check out this link.

Inés and Janell