Long Lines Test Voter Patience Across The Nation — Voters reported waits of an hour and longer on Election Day in areas ranging from the Gulf coasts of Texas and Florida to parts of Missouri and South Carolina, up to Chicago, rural central Pennsylvania and New York City. Polling places opening late, voting machine outages, understaffing and sheer volume caused some voters to abandon the lengthy lines before casting their ballots.
In the Houston area, voters waited over half an hour for polls to open as staff struggled to get voting machinery online. Voters who were late for their jobs left polling places in Brooklyn as high turnout and downed ballot scanners led to waits of up to two hours.
While it is hard to know if the problems exceed usual Election Day hiccups, the issues in states that allow early voting, like Florida and Texas, are unexpected, said Michael McDonald, a political scientist at the University of Florida.
Behind the scenes, officials were addressing potential gaps in computer security. … Read the Rest
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Glitch in Ohio County Incorrectly Marks Voters as Having Already Cast a Ballot — A computer glitch in Geauga County, Ohio, caused the voter registration check-in systems to incorrectly mark some voters as having already voted by absentee ballot. The county’s election director said no voters were turned away because of the mistake. … Read the Rest
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Georgia Officials Quietly Patched Security Holes They Said Didn’t Exist — A ProPublica analysis found that the state was busily fixing problems in its voter registration hours after the office of Secretary of State Brian Kemp, the Republican candidate for governor, had insisted the system was secure. … Read the Rest
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These Voters Had to Wait for Hours: “It Felt Like a Type of Disenfranchisement” — Melanie Taylor arrived at her polling place in a Charleston, South Carolina, church at 7:30 a.m., only to find more than 100 people in line ahead of her. Some of them had already been waiting since 6:15. The voting site was using a computerized login for the first time, and the system was down.
After 45 minutes, with the line still out the door, Taylor had to give up and leave for work. (She leads a social work program.) She’s planning to try again later and has been monitoring the wait times through a neighborhood Facebook group. The news was not encouraging.
“It felt like a type of disenfranchisement, even though there wasn’t any violation of voting rights,” Taylor said. “The wait has been all day three hours or more, which is ridiculous. … Read the Rest
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Missouri Changed Voter ID Requirements, Citing Confusion. Yet on Election Day, There Was Confusion — Voters in Missouri faced confused poll workers as they went to vote on Tuesday, with many reporting they were turned away for not having valid photo identification. The confusion was a result of an October court ruling that allowed Missourians to cast ballots with a range of forms of identification.
Taylor Fritz, 25, brought the voter registration card mailed to him by the state to cast a ballot at his polling station, the Legacy Park Community Center in Lees Summit. But poll workers there told him the card was not an acceptable form of ID, even though a state website specifically says it is. There was even a poster in the gymnasium where he cast a ballot that stated registration cards were acceptable, Fritz said. … Read the Rest
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Georgia Voters Face Hourslong Waits as State Scrambles to Accommodate Turnout — Poll workers in Georgia appear to have been unprepared for the waves of voters who turned out on Tuesday. Officials were scrambling to bring additional equipment to the polls and to field calls from frustrated voters forced to wait in line for hours across the state. Meanwhile, some who called county officials got busy signals or reached voicemail boxes for election offices that were full. … Read the Rest
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Glitch In Ohio County Incorrectly Marks Voters As Having Already Cast A Ballot — A computer glitch in Geauga County, Ohio, caused the voter registration check-in systems to incorrectly mark some voters as having already voted by absentee ballot. The county’s election director said no voters were turned away because of the mistake. … Read the Rest
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Security Guards Block Access to Polling Station Inside Gated Community In South Florida — A polling location was moved into a facility in a private community, and security guards demanded IDs from voters who turned up to cast their ballots. … Read the Rest
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Voters Get Texts With Incorrect Election Information — Text messages received by a slew of voters — from organizations like Vote.org, EveryTown for Gun Safety and TurboVote — reportedly included incomplete or incorrect information on where and when to vote. … Read the Rest