We’re going to see a lot of discussion today about problems with voting machines, attempts at voter suppression and intimidation, poll worker confusion and mistakes, and so on.
Here at Common Cause, we’re getting these stories straight from the voters’ mouths.
That’s because we and a number of other organizations are running the 1-866-MYVOTE1 hotline again. We used this in the 2004 elections to show numerous problems with the presidential election that year: long lines, badly trained poll workers, malfunctioning equipment and uneven distribution of machines.
Voters can also call this number to find their polling place as well as to report election problems. Most of the calls we’ve received on this hotline have been for that purpose, although we’ve had significant numbers of calls from people reporting problems in voting.
We want to share these voter stories with all of you, so that you can get reports of problems almost literally as they happen. We’ll also keep you up-to-date on the steps being taken to correct these problems.
Throughout the day, I’ll be updating here with news on problems and the hot spots that are popping up around the country. Check back for the latest stories!
Here are two calls that we received from Wayne County, Michigan:
“Hi, Precinct 13 at Adler Elementary on Fillmore. The machine that counts the ballots was not operating this morning just after opening. I left at five minutes to eight; I was there at 7 am, and it was not counting the ballots, so we had to put it in and they assured us it would be hand-counted, but a lot of people were very upset.”
“Uh, the voting machines this morning won’t take the voting cards. They keep saying error, and like seven or eight of us had to put our ballots to the side while they call in repairs or whatever.”
And we’re receiving reports that voters in Mercer County, PA, are being asked what party they’re affiliated with. More on that as it comes in…
“I voted this morning at Bushkill Elementary School in Nazreth, PA, and the pollworkers there were taking down our names on a piece of paper and writing R or D for Republican or Democrat next to our names, and this was on an open table where everyone could view it, and it seems a bit, um, odd to me, I thought that information should be private, and I wanted to report that.”
This is from our Common Cause office in Texas:
Voters in the Panhandle are being told via newscast to bring their voter registration card and a photo ID. I called Matt (the CBS newscaster in Amarillo) and told him Texas law does not require a photo ID and a voter registration card. Seems the county clerks (Potter, Randall and God know how many more) sent a note to the news people to say this, “…to speed up the process.”
Called Laurie Vanhoose (Advocacy Inc.) she e-mailed Ann McGeehan (SOS) office and I called the 1-866-MY-Vote-1 hotline to report that voters in the Panhandle are being given this misinformation via the news.
“I went to vote, and used the touch screen and I voted for my candidate, and it chose Perry. I did not vote for Perry, so I told the lady at the thing, that’s not the way I voted. So she did the review and pulled them back up where you can re-vote, and I voted again. It still checked Perry, so she said, well, let’s do it again and change it. So then she said, “I’m going to touch your candidate for you,” and she did it, and it still came up Perry, and I did not vote for Perry. So I left the poll booth.”
My election poll was not up and running at 7 a.m. I finally got to cast my vote at a quarter of eight. Because the machines were not running, the person supposed to set them was supposedly sick… I am furious.
2) Poll workers not being very helpful and the machines are constantly down. It took me ten minutes to vote instead of less than a minute. (Was initially told he was at the wrong polling place, but then permitted to vote when he protested.)
3) As of 7:30 a.m., my polling place was not open at Westminster Ave. and 43rd.
4) The machines were not available to vote. They said something about not having extension cords for the machines so you could not vote on them. Martin Luther King H.S.
We’ve received the following breakdown of calls from our 866-MYVOTE1 hotline:
4,090 calls
2,960 seeking poll locations
490 complaints about election problems
Top 10 states for poll lookups:
State Calls
PA 694
NY 349
NC 217
CA 203
MI 175
AZ 151
OH 142
GA 115
IL 111
MA 106
Total 2,263
Top 10 states for complaints:
State Calls
MI 99
PA 97
OH 43
NY 28
VA 23
FL 19
CA 18
MA 18
MD 17
MO 17
Total 379
Top 10 counties for complaints:
County Calls
WAYNE, MI 58
LANCASTER, PA 32
OAKLAND, MI 19
MACOMB, MI 12
PHILADELPHIA,PA 10
YORK, PA 10
NEW YORK, NY 9
COOK, IL 8
MARICOPA, AZ 8
BROWARD, FL 7
Total 173
We’ve also received word that the number of complaints being called in to Wayne County, MI, have spiked between 12 and 1 — from 58 to 99.
A Blue Mass Group blogger reports problems with the AutoMark machine being tested in 15 Massachusetts communities.
The machine is for disabled voters’ use, but can be used by other voters. Unlike a touchscreen, the AutoMark reads the ballot and then fills it in. The ballot is then fed into the optical scanner. But in Worcester, at least, there is a major problem: the printer doesn’t mark the ballot dark enough for the scanners to read them.
Voters are either revoting without the ballot marker, or having the ballots saved for hand counting later.
Here’s the blog:
http://www.bluemassgroup.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=5092