United States Elections, 2006 - Reported Problems

Reported Problems

There were scattered reports of problems at polling places across the country as new electronic voting systems were introduced in many states. The problems ranged from voter and election official confusion about how to use new voting machines to apparent political dirty tricks designed to keep certain voters from casting their votes to inclement weather suppressing turnout.

Some reported problems:

• Millions of allegedly harassing and deceptive "robo-calls" were reported or placed in at least 53 house districts. The vast majority of the calls were reported to begin with the message "Hello, I’m calling with information about (Democratic candidate)" and continue with a negative message concerning the candidate. Regulatory statements concerning the sponsor of the message (usually the NRCC) allegedly did not come until after the message, instead of before, as the FCC mandates. Citizens reported receiving calls several times an hour and as late as 2:30 AM, and many held the mistaken belief that the calls were from Democratic campaigns.
• Massive undervoting in several Florida counties, likely caused by bad ballot design. An analysis from the Orlando Sentinel claims the undervoting swung an election to the GOP in Florida's 13th congressional district. Democratic candidate Christine Jennings brings a lawsuit to court.
• In Gateway, Arkansas, an 80% turnout was recorded, including two towns where the number of votes surpassed the estimated number of voters from the previous year's census.
• Waldenberg, Arkansas mayoral candidate, Randy Wooten, gets no votes despite claiming he voted for himself and "at least eight or nine people who said they voted for ."
• In the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area, officials could not print reports to verify that voting machines were secure and did not already have votes in them.
• Voting-machine problems kept polls open until 9:00 PM, an hour later than scheduled, in Lebanon County, Pennsylvania.
• A man in Allentown, PA smashed an electronic voting machine with a paperweight. The votes were recovered.
• In a small town in Oklahoma, a power outage in a polling station was caused by a squirrel gnawing on a power cable.
• Officials and experts reported electronic voting machine malfunctions in Indiana, Ohio, New Jersey, Colorado and Florida.
• A bomb threat at East High School caused a voting shutdown in Madison, Wisconsin.
• A Kentucky poll worker was charged with choking a voter.
• Vandals chained the main door and broke keys into the locks of New Jersey Republican candidate for Senate Tom Kean Jr.'s headquarters. Accusations have been made towards Democratic incumbent Bob Menendez, but they deny any involvement in the situation.
• Disabled voters were asked by election officials in Bonneville County, Idaho to use punch card ballots.
• Irregularities with Diebold and other voting machines have been reported in the early elections.
• The Chicago Board of Elections has been running a Web site that has allowed, by a simple programming hack, the exposure of personal information of a million registered voters (fixed on October 21, 2006).
• Reports from Virginia:
  • FBI looking into possible Va. voter intimidation.
  • Calls that voting will lead to arrest.
  • Telling voters that their polling location has changed.
  • Fliers in Buckingham county say “Skip the election”
  • Voting machine problems.
• On Election day November 7, talk show host Laura Ingraham prompted listeners (audio) to jam the Democratic Voter Protection hotline where voting problems were to be reported, reminiscent of the 2002 New Hampshire Senate election phone jamming scandal.
• In Maryland, some voters were given sample ballots by Republican supporters that incorrectly listed Republicans Robert Ehrlich and Michael Steele as Democrats.
• Electronic voting machine problems in Kane County, Illinois kept the polls open until 8:30pm CST, an hour and a half later than scheduled.
• In western Washington, flooding from heavy rainfall interfered with the elections.
• In Denver, Colorado, the computer system containing the voter registration rolls slowed down and crashed on several occasions during the day causing lines that were over two hours long at some vote centers. Some vote centers ran out of provisional ballots, and sample ballots had to be used instead.
• Also in Denver, 44,000 absentee ballots were misprinted with the "yes" and "no" positions on a ballot issue reversed. Also, the bar code designating the ballot style was misprinted, requiring the ballots to be hand sorted which delayed results by over a week. The problem is blamed on ballot misprints by Sequoia Voting Systems. Some ballots had to be hand-copied onto other ballots before they could be counted.