Halfway through Election Day, voting technology has already emerged as the most problematic link in the voting process in 2018.
That’s not to say other failures, including system failures, weren’t prominent, of course. Remember that abortive plan to scare voters with Border Patrol units? That didn’t come to fruition, but voters in one Michigan community had to vote amidst the sound of gunfire from an “armed intruder training.”
Some polling places in Maricopa County, Arizona, simply didn’t open. That’s unsurprising as the local Fox affiliate—not to be confused with its national parent—reported at 5:45 pm on Monday that 72 of the county’s 503 polling places were not ready.
One Broward County, Florida, polling place was also relocated to a gated community. Security demanded voters’ IDs as a condition of entering the community to vote. Voters don’t need an ID to cast a provisional ballot. Moreover, they certainly shouldn’t have to provide ID to a private entity as a condition of exercising their right to vote.
One Kentucky polling place ran out of ballots despite advance warning of high turnout.
No one is sure what’s going down in Dodge City, Kansas, which is predominantly Latinx. Officials threw up obstacles well before the election. Dodge City’s 13,000 registered voters share one polling site—recently moved a mile from any public transport. Then, when Election Day came, they barred media. The county’s other 1,300 registered voters are split among three polling sites, by the way.
In predominantly black Snellville, Georgia, a polling place opened, but the voting machines weren’t functional.
Four Gwinnett County sites experienced technical difficulties of a less basic sort. That’s the Georgia county, by the way, that’s already distinguished itself by rejecting a disproportionate number of absentee ballots. At least one polling place will be open for 25 extra minutes to compensate for the early issues. (Which is more than Johnson County, Indiana, is doing for its voters.)
All over the state Georgia voters are facing multiple forms of equipment shortages and mega-long lines.
Some Georgia voters subjected to Kemp’s outrageous voter purge are being forced to vote provisional ballots even though they are legally entitled to vote regularly. Which, by the way, matters a great deal—provisional ballots are much less likely to be counted.
Similarly, Alabama voters who were labeled “inactive” are being told they cannot cast a regular ballot. That’s a suppression tactic that could affect 300,000 people.
Texas voters faced a number of issues, from power outages to ballot shortages to overt racism and harassment.
Note that when it comes to Georgia and Texas, these electronic Election Day failures follow well-reported early-vote issues with vote flipping in both states. The Lone Star State has known about the issue for years and opted not to fix it. Wonder why?
The errors — which experts have blamed on outdated software and old machines — would appear to work to the advantage of Republican Texas Sen. Ted Cruz over Democratic challenger Beto O'Rourke, and that of Georgia GOP gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp over Democrat Stacey Abrams.
On the day-of, South Carolina voters reported similar vote-switching.
[S]ome voters have complained they’ve noticed votes for several races, including the state’s governor's race, being registered for a party they did not want to select while reviewing the confirmation page before submitting their ballots.
One voter told the station she attempted to correct her vote several times before a poll worker had to move her to another machine.
An error at one Missouri polling station almost cost Sen. Claire McCaskill a vote directly—her own.
That’s in addition to the problems created by Missouri poll workers who either didn’t get or aren’t honoring a recent ruling permitting voters to use non-photo IDs.
Lawyers for Missouri Election Protection, a group of pro bono lawyers monitoring the elections and taking voter calls, sent several “demand letters” to various polls by 10 a.m., reminding the election workers that a photo ID was not required, according to Katie Cronin, a lawyer with the group.
“The phones have been ringing — pretty consistently — off the hook,” Cronin said.
Officials in North Carolina got creative with their explanation for machine malfunctions.
In Knoxville, Tennessee, a power outage forced voters to use paper ballots—and vote outside.
No word yet on whether Healy predicted correctly.
Not to be left behind, Brooklynites also have plenty of right to complain. Every scanner at one Crown Heights polling location failed around 9:30 am.
The Crown Heights machines didn’t come back online until 11 am.
Having issues voting? Know someone who’s having issues voting? Here are some resources.
You should also send a note, or a tweet (to @rpbp), so we can investigate and report on problems. Only by bringing voting problems to light do we get a shot at fixing them—publicity, then litigation.
Freelancer Dawn R. Wolfe contributed to this report.
Tuesday, Nov 6, 2018 · 9:24:07 PM +00:00 · Rebecca Pilar Buckwalter Poza
The Advancement Project’s national office is reporting serious and endemic voter suppression issues in Georgia, including two- to four-hour lines to vote at Atlanta’s Pittman Park and in Gwinnett County, among others. Voters who should be given emergency absentee ballots are instead being told to vote provisionally. As noted above, provisional ballots disadvantage voters.
Advancement Project observers have also seen police at polling places in flagrant violation of anti-intimidation provisions. They have successfully challenged police presence by writing letters and contacting election officials in some places, like Orlando, but police remain at other locations.
The national office also offered more context for the Missouri voter ID snafu: It’s “a case of electioneering by someone who works for the state, but also running in the election who was inside the polling site.” That makes at least two states—Georgia being the other—in which a candidate also serving as an official who can affect voting appears to have done so.