Scattered snafus and dustups, but no widespread irregularities

By Deborah Hastings
The Associated Press

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But by the close of East Coast and Midwest polls, only scattered local irregularities had been reported despite a massive voter turnout that could be the heaviest in decades.

And those voters deserve most of the credit for things going smoothly, said Doug Chapin, director of the nonpartisan Election Reform Information Project.

"At the end of the day it came down to the voters, and they stood in the rain, they asked questions, they went to court," Chapin said. "And voters came through in a way that even the most optimistic of us hadn't expected."

In Ohio, after a woman voter filed suit on behalf of voters who didn't receive absentee ballots on time, all were allowed to cast provisional ballots.

About half of all voters said they were very confident their ballots would be accurately counted, according to a national Associated Press exit poll conducted by Edison Media Research and Mitofsky International.

Hyper-vigilance by election officials also appeared to be the order of the day, which in some states prompted poll closures and unfounded complaints, including a suspicious substance in Mount Laurel, N.J., later determined to be spilled salt.

Well after polls had closed in some states, voters still waiting in long lines became restless.

"They were getting a little rowdy," Bridgeport, Conn., Sgt. Nick Meriano said late tonight. "It's under control now. People were in line a couple hours."

Volunteer monitors received hundreds of complaints about touch-screen voting machines, which computer scientists say are prone to hacking and malfunction. They were used in 29 states and the District of Columbia.

E-voting appeared to take its worst hit in New Orleans, where precinct workers were forced to tell voters to come back because of problems including machines that did not boot up properly.
 
"New Orleans wins the award for the worst voting situation in the country when it comes from electronic voting machines," said Cindy Cohn, legal director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation.

Florida had a few problems of its own in that area. In the state that gave the 2000 election to George W. Bush on the basis of 537 votes, 10 touch-screen voting machines failed at various precincts in Broward County. Nearly half the state's voters were using the ATM-like machines.

Common Cause reported more than 175,000 calls to its national voting hot line. The citizens' lobby group said extremely high voter turnout caused complaints of ballot shortages and overwhelmed polling officials.

But such problems appeared to have been quickly solved in some areas. "There's been nothing systemic, nothing that seems to be widespread," said Matt Brix, director of Common Cause New Mexico.

Tensions nevertheless flared. A Democratic official in Cleveland claimed he was thrown out of a church basement by a screaming poll judge. Another judge allowed him to return.

In Milwaukee, police said tires were slashed on about 20 get-out-the-vote vehicles leased by the GOP.

The ACLU filed a federal lawsuit, asking that Florida absentee ballots mailed within the United States be subject to the same Nov. 12 deadline as overseas votes.

Provisional ballots, new to this election, also prompted worry. Any voter whose name does not appear on precinct rolls is entitled to cast a provisional — or paper — ballot. But elections officials must individually certify them as being cast by registered voters before they can be counted.

Despite all the lawyers, election-rights activists and partisan voting monitors who descended on polls across the country, intent on uncovering voter fraud, the biggest complaint was the long lines that forced voters to wait as long as five hours in queues that circled buildings and wound down streets.

The complicated issue of counting absentee ballots added to a confusing array of new machines and new state voting regulations prompted by the debacle of the last race for the White House.

In more than a dozen states, election officials missed the recommended deadline for mailing such ballots overseas, meaning soldiers risking their lives in Iraq and Afghanistan might not get them in time to vote.