Four states hit hardest by woes at polling sites
From closed polling sites to malfunctioning machines, election day brought frustration for some voters in contests shadowed by questions about the security and fairness of the electoral system.
In Gwinnett County, Ga., four precincts — out of 156 — suffered prolonged technical delays, while some voting machines in South Carolina lacked power or the devices needed to activate them. There was also some confusion in Allegheny County, Pa., which includes Pittsburgh, where at least four polling places were changed in the past two days.
Voters who went to a polling place in Chandler, Ariz., a Phoenix suburb, found the doors locked and a legal notice announcing that the building had been closed overnight for failure to pay rent. (Officials later reopened the location.)
Problems with casting ballots are a regular feature of election day, and making sense of them could take days and weeks. But the number of calls to voting hotlines maintained by a collection of advocacy groups quickly outpaced those received in the last midterm election of 2014. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonprofit group that oversees 20 election call centers, said that as of Tuesday evening, it had received 24,000 phone calls, compared with 14,000 at the same time four years ago.
Four states — Arizona, Florida, Georgia and Texas — stood out as particularly problematic, said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee.
Various problems led to extended hours at locations in several states. In Texas, a judge ordered nine polling locations in Harris County to remain open an extra hour after civil rights organizations complained. And, in Georgia, several sites in Gwinnett County and Fulton County were held open.
Any issues experienced this year are more likely to jangle an electorate already unnerved by the fraught 2016 election, whose aftermath has been picked over amid concerns of Russian interference and President Trump’s repeated warnings, without evidence, of widespread voter fraud.
There were no signs that Russia or any other foreign actor had tried to launch cyberattacks against voting systems, federal authorities said. There was also no indication that any systems have been compromised that would prevent voting or change vote counts, officials said.