Tornadoes, virus fears, machines disrupt voting
Deadly tornadoes knocked out polling places in Tennessee, fears over the coronavirus left some precincts short of election workers and long lines frustrated voters in California and Texas as Super Tuesday sent voters surging to the polls in 14 states.
Scattered reports of polling places opening late, machines malfunctioning or voter rolls being down temporarily disrupted voting in some of the states voting Tuesday, but there were no widespread reports of voters being unable to cast a ballot or security breaches.
Just hours before polls were set to open in Tennessee, tornadoes tore through parts of the state, killing at least 25. With more than a dozen polling sites in Nashville’s Davidson County damaged, voters were sent to other locations, where some of them encountered long lines.
The Tennessee Democratic Party and the presidential campaigns of Joe Biden, Mike Bloomberg, Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren successfully sued Davidson County election officials and the secretary of state’s office to extend voting for three hours beyond the scheduled 7 p.m. closing time.
In Texas, elections officials in the Houston area were sending additional voting machines to polling places after people reported hourslong wait times. A voting-rights group said the problem seemed most acute in heavily black and Latino neighborhoods.
Christopher Krebs, director of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, described problems with pollbooks around the country as “intermittent I.T. issues” that had since been resolved.
U.S. intelligence chiefs have warned that foreign interference remains a threat for the 2020 election, but the national agency that oversees election security said Tuesday it had not detected any notable uptick in either misinformation by foreign nations or targeted attacks on voting equipment.
That doesn’t mean Super Tuesday was free of mischief. The Texas Secretary of State’s Office had reports that voters were receiving robocalls stating — incorrectly — that Republicans would vote on Tuesday while Democrats and independents would vote on Wednesday. Spokesman Stephen Chang said the office has the number from which the calls were made and has reported them to federal authorities. He said it was unclear who was responsible for the calls, which were made across the state.
Fears of the coronavirus temporarily disrupted voting as the day began. In Travis County, Texas, home to Austin, many election workers did not show up, with some citing fears of contracting the virus, according to the county clerk’s office. The election office said it implemented emergency procedures, with elections staff and other employees filling in as poll workers.