Scattered computer glitches slow voting

Story Highlights

• AP: Poll closings delayed in eight states.
• Voter complaints to Justice Department down, according to officials.
• Preliminary FBI investigation into allegations of deceptive calls in Virginia.

Adjust font size:

(CNN) -- More voters than ever used electronic voting machines during Tuesday's midterm elections and scattered glitches were reported across the country.

Two counties in Illinois kept hundreds of precincts open late.

A judge in Kane County ordered all of the county's 223 precincts to stay open an extra 90 minutes, according to Jay Bennett of the Kane County clerk's office. The county was using an electronic voting system called eSlate, first used in the March primary.

The clerk's office in Cook County said a precinct in Cicero and another in Bloom Township, near Chicago Heights, closed late because they opened an hour late for undisclosed reasons.

A federal judge ordered Cuyahoga County, Ohio, near Cleveland, to keep 16 polling locations open until 9 p.m. ET.

The Ohio Democratic Party filed suit citing numerous problems, including late poll openings, machine problems and confusion over the state's identification laws.

More than 70 precincts in Indiana delayed closing. The polls in Delaware County remained open an extra two hours and 40 minutes because of a computer error with electronic voting machines The error delayed polls opening.

The extension was approved by the 5th Circuit Court of Delaware County, according to Phil Nichols of the Delaware County Board of Elections.

"The company that made the machines said the PIN numbers were wrong on the cards needed to activate the machines, and we are attempting as best we can to rectify a situation that would otherwise prohibit people from voting," Judge Wayne Lennington of the 5th Circuit Court told CNN. "I really believe the company let us down in a big way."

Lennington said he had spoken to an official with MicroVote General Corp. earlier in the day. The Board of Elections will file a complaint against MicroVote for the delays, Nichols said.

As polls closed in the East, Justice Department officials said voter complaints to federal officials had been low Tuesday. Fewer than 200 calls were received by the Civil Rights Division hotline in Washington, they said. (Full story)

The Justice Department dispatched an army of more than 850 election observers and monitors to polling places where they see a potential for racial or ethnic discrimination or other violations of voting rights.

After weeks of weighing requests for a federal presence at potential trouble spots, Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and his Civil Rights Division lawyers decided to send the poll watchers to 69 jurisdictions in 22 states.

The federal authorities were sent to monitor a wide variety of specific issues, but in some cases, as in New Orleans, the observers were there primarily to provide support to a wobbly post-Katrina election system which could be overwhelmed by residency issues. (Watch why the monitors are being deployed -- 1:59)

Law enforcement sources told CNN the FBI is launching a preliminary investigation into allegations that some voters in Virginia received deceptive calls prior to election day. (Full story)

Separately, Jean Jensen of the Virginia Board of Elections said the vote tally in two counties will be delayed. The board will notify both political parties that two Edge voting machines -- one in Isle of Wight County and another in Rockingham County -- have "locked up" and officials cannot count votes from those machines, the board said. Technical experts cannot work on them until morning.

In other reported polling problems:

Colorado: Denver District Court denied a request from state Democratic Party lawyers for a two-hour extension for voting in Denver County. Brian Mason of the Colorado Democratic Party said poll books weren't ready when the polls opened, forcing many voters to wait in long lines. Many voters left without voting because the sites ran out of provisional ballots, Mason said, which are used in case of such an emergency.

Florida: Voting was delayed for about 90 minutes in Deerfield Beach, according to Broward County Supervisor of Elections Brenda Snipes, after a poll worker used the same activator to "turn on" machines for two precincts sharing the same location. Each precinct is supposed to have its own activator. In Volusia County, the county elections supervisor confirmed that the wrong ballots were given to 10 voters, according to Jenny Nash, with the Florida secretary of state's office. Nash said those voters "have no recourse and cannot vote again," adding, "once your ballot is counted, that's it. "

Georgia: Polls at one precinct in DeKalb County, in suburban Atlanta, stayed open one hour later and some people left without voting after polling officials failed to follow procedure when voting machines failed to show they were fully charged, election officials said. In Clayton County, south of Atlanta, one precinct stayed open for an extra half hour because a poll official didn't have the key to the building, according to the secretary of state's office.

Indiana: Paper ballots had to be used in more than 100 precincts in Marion County because touch screens on electronic voting machines weren't working, according to election officials.

Kentucky: A poll worker at a Jefferson County polling location was arrested and charged with assault after the poll worker allegedly choked a voter and pushed him out the door. The voter allegedly refused to vote on judicial races on the ballot because of limited knowledge of those races, said Les Fugate of the Kentucky Board of Elections.

Missouri: Five counties ran out of ballots, according to Stacie Temple of the secretary of state's office. Election officials made photocopies of ballots, which Temple says is acceptable for election authorities. The ballots will have to be hand-counted. St. Louis County Election Board Chairman John Diehl called judges at two precincts to remind them of rules regarding acceptable forms of voter identification. Diehl said he received reports from a monitoring group that workers at two polling places were asking voters for photo ID. The Missouri Supreme Court declared state photo ID laws unconstitutional on October 16.

New Jersey: The New Jersey Republican Committee said Republican voters filed four affidavits saying that they weren't able to vote for Republican Senate candidate Tom Kean because the Sequoia voting machines they were using were already programmed to vote for Democrat Bob Menendez, according to NJRC Counsel Mark Sheridan. Michelle Schaffer at Sequoia told CNN, "We have been in close communication with the New Jersey attorney general's office, and we are not aware of any issues that are problematic nor have they raised any to ask us about. "

New Mexico: There was a ballot shortage at two precincts in Bernalillo County, which includes Albuquerque, according to Ray Baray, New Mexico's deputy secretary of state. In one precinct only 150 ballots were delivered for 2,000 registered voters. Baray said that for about two hours Tuesday people were unable to vote because of the shortage. He suspects the ballots came up short because someone left off a zero in the number of ballots to be sent.

New York: The Supreme Court of Albany County ordered that all paper ballots in that county -- including absentee, military, affidavit, emergency and optically scanned -- be impounded, a pre-emptive move in case races are tight. In those races, final results won't be known for days. The decision is the result of a suit that was filed on behalf of both the New York Democratic and Republican parties.

North Carolina: One polling place in Durham County stayed open an hour late because a poll worker forgot the key to the building, and the polling place opened 50 minutes late, according to Johnnie McLean of the North Carolina Board of Elections.

Rhode Island: Three electronic voting machines in West Warwick malfunctioned early in the day and were quickly repaired or replaced, said Bob Kando, executive director of the Rhode Island Board of Elections.

South Carolina: A judge ordered four polling precincts in Lancaster County to stay open an additional hour because voting did not start promptly at 7 a.m. for various reasons, according to the secretary of state's office, and polling officials didn't offer voters a paper ballot as they should have while electronic voting wasn't running.

Utah: Utah County experienced encoder problems early Tuesday at some polling places, and voters were allowed to vote provisionally until the problem was solved at about 9:15 a.m., according to Joe Demma, the chief of staff to the lieutenant governor. Utah County contains Provo, one of the state's largest cities.

Wisconsin: A circuit court judge ordered a polling station in Madison to stay open an hour late after a bomb threat there forced officials to move voting equipment across the street.

Weather played a role in voting as well. CNN meteorologists pinpointed a few areas where weather was bad enough Tuesday to have a serious impact: the Southeast, especially Georgia and the Carolinas, where heavy rain and thunderstorms were in the forecast; Montana and Idaho, with high winds; and Washington state, where heavy rain and severe flooding have left highways blocked and people stranded. (Full story)

Nick Handy, Washington's elections director, said the state devised ways for the handful of voters blocked from the polls to either fax or electronically transmit their ballot to the auditors. Washington is a predominantly vote-by-mail state, and that minimized the impact of the storm.

Tools:
Save |
Print |
E-mail |
Most Popular |

Next story in Politics

Politics

What are E-mail Alerts? | Manage Alerts | Create Your Own

Get up-to-the minute news from CNN

CNN.com gives you the latest stories and video from the around the world, with in-depth coverage of U.S. news, politics, entertainment, health, crime, tech and more.