Groups Calls For Extended Voting Hours Due to Voters Turned Away from Polls

Virginia Tech Students Sent Miles to Remote Location to Vote...

Brad Friedman Byon 11/4/2008, 1:03pm PT

Serious problems "continue to plague Virginia". The following info comes from the 866-OUR-VOTE website (via the Institute for Southern Studies)...

Dozens of polling places are experiencing varying degrees of machine malfunction. Some polling places are either completely closed or have been closed for hours. Thousands of voters may have been turned away illegally by polling workers.

Voters have illegally been issued with provisional ballets where machines have been broken.

Students at Virginia Tech, previously the victims of misinformation, have seen their polling place suddenly and unexpectedly moved six miles to a location with little parking.

UPDATE: RAW STORY has more on "massive voting machine failures and voters being turned away from polls," and a call to extend polling hours in VA. VA uses 100% unverifiable DRE (usually touch-screen) systems across virtually the entire state. When machines of that sort break down, voters can't vote, unless there are emergency paper ballots on hand, and officials bother to give them out to voters.

UPDATE II: More on the dirty tricks at Virginia Tech, including a map to the remote pollsite students are being sent to.

More than 5,600 people, mainly Virginia Tech students, are registered to vote at precinct E1 in Blacksburg, Virginia (Montgomery County). That number is nearly double what the state law allows for polling stations and the lack of an additional polling station is causing substantial delays. In addition, the polling place is 6.5 miles away from campus at a tiny church located off the main road. There is no street sign marking the turn off to the one lane road. There are 30 parking spots for the thousands of voters expected to turn up at precinct E1.

Note: This is the same county in VA (Richmond) where the registrar had purposely distributed incorrect information to Virginia Tech students, as we reported back in early September, to warn them they might lose scholarships and ability to be declared dependents on their parents tax forms if they registered to vote there.



