Missing ballots, balky machines hamper voting in key states

[DeepModem Mom]

Source: Los Angeles Times

Heavy voter turnout overwhelmed polling places in the key battleground states of Florida, Ohio and Virginia, prompting tens of thousands of complaints about long waits, missing ballots and malfunctioning voting machines.

Most trouble spots had been identified ahead of the voting by the Election Protection Coalition, a vote-monitoring cooperative uniting dozens of nonpartisan civil-rights and public- policy groups. The coalition reported more than 41,000 calls to its (866) OUR-VOTE hotline by midday, including 1,400 from Florida and more than 1,000 from Ohio. It was unclear if the problems reported so far were indications of broader breakdowns. But voting-rights groups were already sounding the alarm....

Voters in Virginia, Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio faced waits of up to four hours, according to the coalition.

Widespread breakdowns of electronic voting machines and jamming of optical scanners for paper ballots were reported throughout Florida. "Ballots are being set aside to be run through the scanners at end of the day, which doesn't allow the voter to verify that the ballot was marked as intended," said Derek Cressman of Common Cause. "We've seen dozens of reports of this all across South Florida. It doesn't appear to be an isolated issue."

Misprinted ballots in Broward County caused delay at some polling places, and election workers in Tampa, Tallahassee, Palm Beach and Miami were having trouble calling in to the state supervisor of elections to verify eligibility of voters whose names were among more than 10,000 still being contested under Florida's "no match, no vote" law adopted last year....

***

In addition to machine problems in Philadelphia, election monitors across Pennsylvania reported at midday that students at Penn State University and elsewhere were being forced to vote on provisional ballots. Voting-rights groups worry that provisional ballots may not get counted because they are not tabulated until days after election day....

Read more: http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-votingproblems5-2008nov05,0,730388.story

[Mari333]

1. should have been fixed 8 yrs ago....n/t

[Porschenut1066]

2. What do you mean. The Republicans did FIX the result 8yrs ago!

[driver8]

3. WTF?

The basis of a democracy is voting and counting votes!!

How fucking hard is it to have a person mark a ballot, and then accurately count that ballot?

This is unbelievable that we are still dealing with this shit. I guess no one was aware that an election was happening today, eh?

[ToolTex]

4. Oh yes, the rethugs were very aware of it. They passed a law and bush

signed it, to FIX the system! The optical scanners are absolutely not reliable, as has been reported here from all across the country in tests and in early voting.

I have a very queasy feeling about this election.

[Mr_Jefferson_24]

5. Same as it ever was -- our GOP hijacked electoral process...

... disenfranchising the voluminous low income and middle class Dems -- just the way they like it.

[GetTheRightVote]

6. Repubs have had control of everything but that is about to change with Pres Obama

we can not allow them to suppress or steal an election again.

:kick:

[canadianbeaver]

7. Voters in Iraq......don't even have to deal with this kind of shit......n/t

[glinda]

8. Repugs will steal this one.

Too many glitches and too little backbone. I am really sick of this Country right now. I hope my faith in it will be renewed but am not hopeful at this moment. Too many problems. Too too many.

[nashville_brook]

9. just heard on the radio -- 6 hour waits all day at Univ of Central Florida (orlando)

precincts "nextdoor" had no lines.

[xochi]

10. It's clear beyond a shadow of doubt that Americans want REAL change, but

Obama becoming president depends on whether they'll be able to protect the fairness of this election, which twice they weren't able to do before.

[xochi]

11. Here's something you can do...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=389x4368065

[spooky3]

12. no line at 4:45 PM in blue Arlington VA

I went past my polling place then (already voted) and was surprised not to see people standing in line then, although many people don't get home from work until later than then. I will take this as an indication that the machines were working well. The WaPo reported earlier that 20% of Arlington voters had already voted (twice the % of early voting in the last election, IIRC).