Reports of Voting Problems

Nov. 7, 2006 — -- With polls in only a few states closed, there were no reported major national problems, but there were many localized problems. It was too soon to tell how significant any of these problems will be.

Both the Republican and Democratic parties appeared to be comfortable at this hour. Luis Miranda, spokesman for the Democratic National Committee, said that "things are flowing smoothly, we are encouraged and want to remind people to vote. If they do encounter problems, they should tell us."

A Republican source said that while party officials still felt that things were going relatively smoothly, they were concerned about the possibility that Michigan senate candidate Mike Bouchard's Web site was hacked, and machines had been tampered with in New Jersey. Party officials were also concerned that they ran out of ballots in a heavily Republican county in New Mexico, but in balance, they were comfortable with the process of the election.

Interestingly, on the national level, for the first time, Republicans are being far more aggressive in pointing out problems than the Democrats. Republican lawyers, however, are not on the same political page. They are in agreement with the Democrat attorneys that everything, on the whole, is going relatively well.

Keep in mind that this information is from a variety of sources: party officials, observers and interest groups from all sides. There are well over 50 million people likely to vote today. Problems and issues should be kept in that context.

There were sporadic complaints of issues with some optical scanning machines not working correctly in the morning in St. Louis. The secretary of state's office said voters were allowed to fill out ballots and leave them for election officials to put through the machines later in the day.

Republicans and Democrats both say that they're seeing "better than expected" turnout across the state and that the election systems appear to be working as advertised. A Democratic spokesman says he's glad the new optical scan and touch-screen systems were rolled out during the primary season as there appear to be "fewer rough spots" than the prior run.

Ohio is the No. 1 state getting called about at nationwide hotline centers run by Election Protection -- a consortium led by People for the American Way, the NAACP, and the Lawyer Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law. According to calls at the Election Protection hotline in Ohio, there were large problems in the district of East Cleveland (Cuyahoga County) -- all the machines at one precinct crashed and they did not hand out paper ballots.

In Franklin County there were problems with the voter ID rules. Poll workers incorrectly turned away people with driver's licenses that didn't match their home addresses on the rolls. Local Republican lawyers have not returned calls.

The DNC says there were many reports of ID confusion by poll workers. In Columbus, people with driver's licenses that did not match the rolls were forced to vote provisionally, which should not happen.

Also in Columbus, voters received notices telling them that their polling location changed, and redirecting them to churches that were not polling sites.

There were reports of long lines and problems at other places that have been attributed to issues like printer malfunctions, but have been resolved and things are moving smoothly.

The Associated Press reported that many long lines and machine problems plagued the early morning period in Ohio. Several actual candidates on the ballot had problems, including Jean Schmidt (whose ballot wouldn't scan), Republican Rep. Steve Chabot had ID problems but was able to vote after he drove home to get proper ID. There were also rumors that Lee Fisher had early morning problems with machines but eventually voted.

Roughly 40 precincts in Cuyahoga County had to switch to paper ballots after machine problems

In New Jersey -- home of a key and close Senate race between Democrat Bob Menendez and Republican Tom Kean Jr. -- Republicans are upset about reports that machines are malfunctioning. The reports say Menendez is pre-selected on machines when voters try to use them. Voters tried to cast their ballot for Tom Kean but couldn't. It was unknown if it was caused by glitches or something malicious.