Long lines a pain, glitches pop up as U.S. votes

A poll worker (right), shows a voter a sample ballot that is covering a mural of President Barack Obama in the voting area of Benjamin Franklin Elementary School polling site Tuesday in Philadelphia. The mural was ordered to be covered after Republicans filed a complaint.
A poll worker (right), shows a voter a sample ballot that is covering a mural of President Barack Obama in the voting area of Benjamin Franklin Elementary School polling site Tuesday in Philadelphia. The mural was ordered to be covered after Republicans filed a complaint.

— Sporadic problems were reported Tuesday at polling places around the country, many of them in Pennsylvania, including a confrontation involving Republican inspectors over access to some voting sites.

One Florida election office mistakenly told voters in robocalls that the election was today.

Although the majority of complaints were about extremely long lines, the Election Protection coalition of civil-rights and voting-access groups said they had gotten some more serious calls among more than 69,000 received on a toll-free voter-protection hot line.

“The calls have been hot and heavy all day long,” said Barbara Arnwine, president of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law.

In Philadelphia, the Republican Party said 75 legally credentialed voting inspectors were blocked from polling places in the heavily Democratic city, prompting the GOP to obtain a court order providing them access. Local prosecutors were also looking into the reports. Democratic Party officials did not immediately return a message seeking comment.

Also in central Pennsylvania, a voting machine lit up for Republican Mitt Romney even when a voter pressed the button for President Barack Obama. Officials said later Tuesday that the machine has been recalibrated and is back in service.

Pennsylvania Department of State spokesman Ron Ruman said the Perry County voter notified elections officials of the problem after trying to cast his ballot Tuesday. Video of what Ruman called a “momentary glitch” was widely viewed on YouTube.

Pennsylvania was also the scene of what a state Common Cause official called “widespread” confusion over voter-ID requirements. The state this year enacted a new photo-ID requirement, but it was put on hold for Tuesday’s election by a judge amid concern many voters would not be able to comply on time.

Barry Kauffman, executive director of Common Cause in Pennsylvania, said election workers in many places were demanding IDs even though they are not required. It was unclear, however, just how many voters may have been turned away or discouraged.

“There seems to be a lot of confusion about voter ID. Apparently the poll workers were not adequately trained,” he said.

Also in Philadelphia, a judge ordered a mural of President Barack Obama covered up after a Republican election worker snapped a picture of it at a school polling place, according to a statement from the Republican Party.

The battleground state of Ohio was the scene of yet another court battle, this one involving a lawsuit contending that voting software installed by the state could allow manipulation of ballots by people not connected to official election boards. A judge dismissed a lawsuit by a Green Party candidate seeking to stop use of the software.

The Florida robo-call glitch occurred in Pinellas County, where the supervisor of elections said about 12,000 voters were wrongly told they could vote today.

Spokesman Nancy Whitlock said the office had contracted with a company called callfire. com to call voters who had requested mail ballots but had not yet returned them.

Whitlock said calls went to those voters without a problem on Thursday, and then again Monday.

For some reason, she said, when the service didn’t reach some 12,000 voters Monday, it then called them again on Tuesday between 8 a.m. and 8:30 a.m. with the same message. Whitlock said another message then went out to the same 12,000 voters, telling them that Tuesday was the correct day to vote.

In Washington, D.C., a glitch with an automated phone system resulted in a handful of residents receiving calls from the Democratic Party telling them to go to the polls today, according to Tania Jackson, a spokesman for the local Democratic Party. The party followed up with new calls that provided the correct information, Jackson said.

Back in Ohio, officials in Franklin County — where the capital city of Columbus is located — barred the Tea Partylinked True the Vote group from monitoring polling places because applications to do so weren’t filed properly.

Franklin County Board of Elections spokesman Ben Piscitelli said Tuesday that managers were instructed to keep True the Vote representatives from the polls in the Columbus area because of the application problem.

Catherine Engelbrecht, president of the Houston-based group, accused the Ohio Democratic Party of being behind pressure that led several local Ohio candidates to withdraw their permission for the group’s members to act as election observers.

Elsewhere, the Election Protection coalition reported problems with ballot scanners in the Ohio cities of Cleveland, Dayton and Toledo; late-opening polling places in minority-group neighborhoods in Galveston, Texas; and some precincts in the Tampa, Fla., area where voters are being redirected to another polling place where they must cast a provisional ballot.

In Tennessee, poll watchers in Memphis and Nashville reported many voting problems on Tuesday, but few had to do with the state’s new voter photo-ID law. Instead, volunteers and city officials said people were turned away because of address problems and because their polling places had changed because of redistricting. Others gave up in the face of long lines and overwhelmed poll workers.

Meanwhile, no problems were being reported in Shelby County from voters using new Memphis library photo IDs.

The city sued after state elections officials refused to accept the library cards in the August primaries. Two weeks ago, the state Court of Appeals upheld the voter-ID law but also ruled that the library cards were valid for voting. The state appealed the ruling and the Supreme Court has agreed to hear it, just not in time to affect Election Day.

Information for this article was contributed by Tamara Lush, A.J. Connelly, Andrew Welsh-Huggins in Columbus, Ohio, Patrick Walters, Adrian Sainz and Travis Loller of The Associated Press and Phil Mattingly of Bloomberg News.

Front Section, Pages 5 on 11/07/2012

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