Voting problems reported in several states
/Americans went to the polls by the tens of millions Tuesday, and while most voted without incident, long waits, legal disputes and lingering damage from Hurricane Sandy hindered balloting in several states.
In Philadelphia, some voters reported that election workers required photo identification, despite a judge’s ruling last month placing Pennsylvania’s tough new ID law on hold for 2012. Officials are permitted to ask for photo identification as part of a test run but not as a condition for voting.
Albert Hill, 56, said he argued for 10 minutes with a poll monitor who insisted he would not be allowed to vote unless he showed his photographic identification. He said he watched two African American women leave the line in front of him because they were turned away for the same reason.
“I told [the poll monitor], ‘If you want to play this game, here is my wallet, and here’s my ID, but I don’t have to show it to vote,’ ” said an angry Hill, a former employee of a bottle manufacturing company. “As of last night, the governor and the mayor of Philadelphia said I don’t have to show my ID to vote.”
Ron Ruman, a spokesman for the Pennsylvania Department of State, said his office gave clear instructions to poll workers that they could ask for but not demand voter identification, and believes such problems are very limited.
“We heard very few scattered reports of this, and we really weren’t able to confirm any of it. I don’t know for sure what happened,” Ruman said. “If poll workers said this, they were mistaken, and this should not have happened. “
In New Jersey and New York, voters struggled with the residual effects of Hurricane Sandy. As the polls opened Tuesday, an estimated 600,000 New Jersey residents were still without electricity, and thousands remained in emergency shelters. The National Weather Service forecast another storm for Wednesday, with the possibility of high winds and new flooding in coastal areas.
New Jersey officials announced over the weekend that those displaced by the storm would be able to request ballots by e-mail or fax. But many voters reported that they did not receive electronic ballots from county elections offices after uploading applications.
In Ocean County, along the Atlantic Coast, half of the the 229 polling places remained inoperable because of storm damage. Election officials improvised by converting a Winnebago into a rolling polling place, driving it to emergency shelters.
“We were scrambling, figuring out what to do,” said Board of Elections chairman George Gilmore. “We heard about this bus and we grabbed it.”
In New York City, about 350,000 homes remained dark. Officials reported long lines in front of polling places that had been consolidated in the wake of the storm. Voters in the Rockaways and the Bronx were casting ballots in tents powered by generators.
Elsewhere, most of the problems seemed to fall under the category of hiccups and glitches.
In Florida’s Pinellas County, which includes Tampa and St. Petersburg, more than 12,000 residents mistakenly received robocalls Tuesday morning with a message that they had until 7 p.m. “tomorrow” to turn in absentee ballots. Officials re-recorded a corrected message, which was sent out later in the morning.
In suburban Milmont Park, Pa., Jacqueline Jrolf said she was surprised to see pre-printed signs hanging in the Woodlyn Elementary School where she voted that demanded voters show their photo ID in order to vote. The signs, which referred to a state law that had been put on hold for this election, read: “New state law requires any voter to provide proof of identification.”
Jrolf, a ceramic artist and art teacher, said some voters were told to show ID and some weren’t. She voted and then insisted that a poll station chief cross out the words on the signs. Jrolf said the worker acknowledged that the law was not in effect this year.
Jrolf visited a neighboring polling station, found the identical pre-printed signs, and a polling chief there refused to remove them.
“It’s voter suppression,” Jrolf said. “He knew it was inaccurate, and he wasn’t going to do anything about it. This really upsets me. “
Penda Hair, co-director of the Advancement Project, which filed the lawsuit to stop the Pennsylvania law, said the state is at fault for allowing poll workers to give incorrect information and display signs with false requirements.
“This is what we feared,” Hair said. “We are very troubled because we don’t know how many voters were turned away or got discouraged and gave up.... It seems like this is something the state wanted to have happen.”
