UPDATED throughout day/night as warranted...

Brad Friedman Byon 11/2/2010, 7:23pm PT

[On/off the air all day today, so trying to keep up as I can. Feel free to leave your own problem reports, or those you're finding in the media, in comments in this thread. Most recent reports will be added to top of this item.]



NATIONAL: "Widespread Reports of Problems at Polls" (NYTimes):

Officials from the Election Protection Coalition, an association of voting rights groups that operated a national hot line for voting-related complaints, said that by early Tuesday evening their hot line had received more than 15,000 calls, with the most coming from California, Texas, Pennsylvania, New York and Georgia. Although most were general inquiries, nearly 2,100 involved reports of problems like polls opening late, machine malfunctions and confusion over voter registrations. More than 200 calls involved claims of voter intimidation.

REMINDER: If you had probs at the polls today (or are still having them, as polls are still open out here in the West), please remember to report them to 1-866-OUR-VOTE! It's very important to track records of all such probs, as the full extent of problem patterns often don't reveal themselves until the days, weeks (and sometimes, even months) after an election! Thank you...

TX: Collin County - E-pollbooks, networks fail at "vote centers" disenfranchising untold numbers of voters. (Collin County Observer)

Concerns brought to our attention so far include a corrupt file loaded on all of the county-issued electronic pollbooks, network, and telephony issues. According to our information, voting in many locations was interrupted due to the issues with electronic pollbooks and networks, and the resulting phone calls into the Elections Office overwhelmed their capacity to receive and handle calls.

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Technicians in the field are working to correct the IT issues, but making changes to the software while voting is in process raises multiple security concerns.

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We hate to say "I told you so..." but the Observer has been sounding the alarm on this issue for years.

We know how ya feel, Observer. Collin County, btw, is also where a voter reported a Diebold touch-screen flipping his vote from Democratic to Republican.

CA: Contra Costa County - Inspired by my own e-voting disasters in '08 (when the ES&S InkaVote Plus system here in L.A. County misprinted 4 out of 12 of my votes) and in '10 (when after two hours of failure with two of the same machines I finally had to give up and vote on a hand-marked paper ballot), a voter in Contra Costa tries to use the e-voting system for disabled voters as I did. After spending four hours trying to cast a vote on the counties ES&S AutoMark, he eventually had to give up. The shameful tale is detailed here. And remember, allowing disabled voters to vote privately and independently was one of the prime thrusts for the $4 billion federal "encouragement" for states to "upgrade" to these e-voting systems as per the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) of 2002. Fail. Again.

National: Here's the lede from Joyce McCloy's Voting News tonight...

866-OUR-VOTE received over 10,000 calls today. Top states include California, Georgia & Pennsylvania. Some in today's news. Would you believe Alabama didn't have enough pens, so used pencils to mark ballots, causing probs? ..Maryland Diebold touchscreens flip votes from GOP to DEM!..California awaits millions of mail ballots..Various probs with epoll books, paper poll books, power outages, locked up ballots, polling place moves, voting machine shutdowns, vote flipping, missing contests, bi-partisan tricks, voter registration problems.. poll locations...

See her report for details and links for all of the above.

NJ: Warren County - Touch-screen machine flips GOP to Dem and Dem to a ballot initiative. Via OurVoteLive.org's problem report database...

paper tape comes out, but can't read it, so unknown if the machine registered the proper votes. ... saw this problem on news, would push one button, another button lights up, went to vote Republican, Democrat lit up, then one line wanted to vote Democrat, and the light went on for the state constitution question. ... They had the problem before, and did not shut down that machine. Doesn't know why they still have people using that machine.

MD: Diebold touch-screen votes flip from GOP to Dem... (Luterville-Timonium Patch))

Board of Elections says issue is common

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At least two voting machines at Pine Grove Middle School in Parkville had to be restarted after some voters had problems voting for Republican county executive candidate Ken Holt.

MD was the first state in country, along with GA, to go to all Diebold touch-screen systems. The BRAD BLOG obtained and published a long redacted SAIC report on their systems in 2007, years after its secret 2003 publication. The report was described at the time as the "Pentagon Papers of E-Voting," showing all kinds of problems with the systems. The state was supposed to move to paper ballots by this year. So why didn't they?

MUCH MORE BELOW...

AL: "Pencils causing problems for some voters." Seriously? A problem finding enough pens?!...

Regular voters in previous Alabama elections may have noticed a change at the polls today, as election workers handed out pencils to complete ballots instead of the familiar black pens. Calhoun County Probate Judge Alice Martin, the county's chief election official, said the pencils have caused some problems here and elsewhere in the state. Voters who bear down too hard with the pencils in some cases are leaving an impression on the other side of their ballots, causing the machines that read them to reject the ballots.

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Representatives of the company that provides election equipment and services to nearly every Alabama county [ES&S] said the change was made because it was becoming increasingly difficult to find enough pens.

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ES&S contracts with 66 of Alabama’s 67 counties to provide election supplies and support.

KS: Attorney General investigating robocalls telling voters they had to bring proof of home ownership to the polls in order to vote. And that voting was on Wednesday!

NV: 3:02pm PT Dave Weigel on Twitter says "Early exits have dead heat in" Nevada Senate race between Angle and Reid. Bad news, if so, since there will largely be no record of verifiable voter intent to "recount" across the state on their 100% unverifiable touch-screen voting systems. More details here...

NATIONAL: Combing through lots of problem reports at OurVoteLive.org problem database. Call them with any poll problems voting at 866-OUR-VOTE.

Milwaukee, WI: "Ballot mix-up in Brookfield" (Journal Sentinel)

A mix-up at a Brookfield polling site caused as many as 40 people to vote in the wrong race, a mistake that could be an issue if a contested state Senate race is close.

NC: Problems reported with op-scan machines in Waukesha, WI (where, as we recently reported, the County Clerk keeps the election results only on the personal computer in her office(!) See Milwaukee Journal Sentinel's online problem report database. Sort by city to see reports for Waukesha, including machines not working at several different high school polling places.

SC: Tea Partiers Allegedly Harass Black Student Voters in SC (Mother Jones):

Tea party activists in South Carolina are allegedly intimidating black college students and other black voters at the polls, according to the South Carolina Democratic Party. Early this morning, self-identified tea party activists showed up at a polling station near Benedict College in Columbia, "basically harassing students—telling people not to vote and generally making voters feel uncomfortable," says Keiana Page, press secretary for the state Democratic Party, who said that the party's legal team is currently investigating the reported incident at the historically black college.

11/1/10, NH: NH Democratic Party Loses Phone Service (AP):

CONCORD, N.H. (AP) — The New Hampshire Democratic Party has lost phone service — on some or all lines — at local campaign offices at 11 locations around the state. Michael Brunelle, the party's executive director, said two phone and Internet providers haven't pinpointed the problem. Service was affected in Concord, Manchester, Milford, Dover, Hampton, Nashua, Keene, Plymouth, Exeter, Londonderry and Somersworth starting at 1:30 p.m. Monday. The party also alerted the state attorney general's office as a precaution. In 2002, a scheme to disrupt Democrats' get-out-the-vote efforts by jamming telephones with hang-up calls resulted in criminal convictions for former state GOP executive director Charles McGee and former political consultant Allen Raymond.

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