Nefarious operatives apparently intent on deterring certain voters from casting their ballots on Tuesday have distributed flyers and robocalls disseminating misinformation about the date of the election and how they should cast their ballot.

According to the Election Protection Coalition, which has received more than 10,000 calls to its national election hotline, Latino voters in the Los Angeles area have been targeted by so-called robocalls – recorded messages – reminding them to vote Nov. 3, instead of the real date, Nov. 2.

“We have received reports of robocalls sent to Latino voters intended to mislead them about Election Day being on Wednesday, not today,” said Kathay Feng, executive director of Common Cause and Election Protection Los Angeles Hotline. “Voter suppression is illegal, and we are calling for a full investigation and prosecution if this is in fact taking place.”

Voters in Louisiana, Maine and New Hampshire reported receiving calls directing them to a website to vote online, instead of at the polls. Internet voting, however, is not available to any voters in the United States. [See update below.] Only U.S. voters overseas – such as military personnel and others – have the option to cast ballots online, and only in two states, Arizona and a handful of counties in West Virginia.

A recent pilot project of an internet voting system that was to be deployed in this year's election in Washington, D.C., was quickly abandoned after computer-security students at the University of Michigan subverted the system and made it play their school's fight song.

Officials have expressed concern that the web address given in the robocalls could be a scam to steal voters' identity if they enter personal information at the sites.

Other robocalls in Kansas have erroneously told voters they need to bring their voter registration card to the polls as well as proof of home ownership in order to cast a ballot – neither of which is true. The calls also state the election date as Nov. 3.

Voters in minority neighborhoods in Houston, Texas, have received fliers purporting to come from a nonexistent political group – the Black Democratic Trust of Texas. The fliers tell voters not to vote a straight Democratic ticket – an option in some jurisdictions where voters can press one button on a voting machine and the machine automatically selects every candidate in the voter's chosen party.

The fliers read:

Republicans are trying to trick us! When you vote straight ticket Democrat, it is actually voting for Republicans, and your vote doesn't count. We are urging everyone to VOTE for BILL WHITE. A VOTE for BILL WHITE is a VOTE for the ENTIRE DEMOCRATIC ticket.

The fliers end with the Obama presidential campaign slogan, "Yes We Can."

In addition to voter-suppression issues, there have been scattered reports throughout the day of voting-machine malfunctions and voter-registration snafus in various states.

Numerous callers in Pennsylvania, particularly in Philadelphia, reported machines being down when they arrived to the polls. Other machines froze up when voters used them. Philadelphia uses Shouptronic push-button electronic machines made by Danaher, one of the lesser-known voting-machine companies.

Pam Smith, president of Verified Voting, a group that led the national fight for voting-machine paper trails, said in a press conference that in Ohio, some voting machines had printer problems, preventing them from producing paper trails that can be used in post-election recounts and audits.

There have also been problems with optical-scan machines jamming in New York, preventing ballots from being processed at the polling location. When this happens, ballots are supposed to be secured at the polling place and scanned at a central election office when the polls close.

Voter registration issues have cropped up in Ohio, Michigan and Texas. In Ohio, public assistance agencies that processed voter registration applications failed to file them some of the forms with the election office in time for the election.

In Ann Arbor, Michigan, university students were told they weren't registered to vote. An investigation showed that when they turned 21, the state automatically issued them new drivers licenses and updated their voter registration profiles with the address on their license. But because the address on their license didn't always match their address at the university, they weren't on the voter lists at university-area polling places.

Voter registration issues have become a common problem ever since states switched to mandatory, statewide voter-registration databases to track voters.

UPDATE 11/3/10: The New Hampshire attorney general's office, which has been investigating the robocalls, says it's been able to determine that the web site mentioned in the calls – http://www.democracydependsonyou.com – doesn't actually allow voters to cast their votes online, it only allows them to obtain an application that they can then send to their local election office to obtain an absentee ballot. Deputy Attorney General Bud Fitch told Threat Level that voters who filed complaints misunderstood and thought they were being directed to the site to vote. He said the owners of the site, registered to BKM Group, added language to the site to make it clear.

There had been some concern that the site had been set up as a trap to steal voters' personal information for identity theft. Fitch said that although his office is still investigating, it had so far found "no evidence suggesting this is identity theft or other fraud."

Photo courtesy Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

See also: