Early voting snafu delays count in Walker
By Catherine Edgemon for the Walker County Messenger. 03 November 2004

Elections officials said a list of early voters should have been provided to each precinct so poll workers could check to see if voters had already cast ballots. The lists were not provided.

Elections workers said they had to check manually to weed out duplicate ballots.

As of 10:30 p.m. totals from 15 of 18 precincts had been tallied. In neighboring Catoosa County, all precincts were counted by 9 p.m.

Two attorneys representing the Republican Party said they were at the courthouse to ensure those who voted early during the advance voting period were not allowed to vote again on election day.

Delays began early in the day at the Chattanooga Valley precinct with problems with an encoder, which is used to program the voting cards, Walker Board of Elections member Terry Morgan said.

Diebold, manufacturer of the electronic voting machines, did not program the encoder properly, he said.

Reports of lines of up to 200 voters at closing time came in from precincts like Peavine and Rossville. Morgan said all voters in line at 7 p.m. would be allowed to vote. A poll worker watched to ensure nobody jumped in line after polls closed.

Poll workers at Chickamauga, Rossville and LaFayette reported long lines of voters, with some voters waiting more than one hour to vote. Other precincts reported minor problems like change of address, unregistered voters and voters going to the wrong polling site.

Walker County has about nearly 31,700 registered voters.