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Election Problem Log - 2004 to 2009
Check out our other problem logs!
VotersUnite! began this problem log with the November 2004 election. It continued its compilation of problems reported in the media by adding news stories about subsequent elections, through 2009. See also: Failures by vendor and Failures by state.
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Date Problem Type State
Vendor
Description
11/5/2004 Malfeasance OH Warren County. Citing concerns about potential terrorism, officials locked down the county administration building on election night and blocked anyone from observing the vote count as the nation awaited Ohio's returns. The Warren results were part of the last tallies that helped clinch President Bush's re-election. James Lee, spokesman with the Ohio Secretary of State's Office in Columbus, said Thursday he hasn't heard of any situations similar to Warren County's building restrictions. Story
11/6/2004 Malfeasance OH Auglaize County In a letter dated Oct. 21, Ken Nuss, former deputy director of the County Board of Elections, claimed that Joe McGinnis, a former employee of ES&S, the company that provides the voting system in Auglaize County, was on the main computer that is used to create the ballot and compile election results, which would go against election protocol. Nuss was suspended and then resigned. Story Archive
11/18/2004 Malfeasance OH Hearings in Ohio reveal a host of problems of many types. Story
11/19/2004 Malfeasance OH Lawyers who have been documenting voting day problems in Ohio say they'll challenge the results of the presidential election as soon as the vote is official. The lawyers say documented cases of long lines, a shortage of machines and a pattern of problems in predominantly black neighborhoods are enough evidence to bring such a challenge. Story Archive
11/24/2004 Malfeasance OH Testimony of dozens of Ohio citizens revealed that, by depriving precincts of adequate numbers of functioning voting machines, Blackwell created waits of three to 11 hours, driving tens of thousands of likely Democratic voters away from the polls. Story
12/4/2004 Malfeasance OH Lucas County. An extensive housecleaning in the Lucas County elections office was announced yesterday with Elections Director Paula Hicks-Hudson resigning and four other officials suspended pending investigation into problems with the official count of the Nov. 2 election. Story Archive
12/11/2004 Malfeasance OH Greene County. The Director of the Board of Elections refused recount volunteers access to public voting records, claiming it was on orders from Secretary of State Blackwell. Story
12/11/2004 Malfeasance OH Cuyahoga County. In Cleveland, poll workers failed to instruct voters to use the correct punch card machines for their precinct Since the candidates were in different order in different precincts, voters using the ballot for one precinct and the machine for a different one cast votes for candidates they didn't mean to select. Story Archive
12/12/2004 Malfeasance OH Franklin County. (Columbus.) 39 voting machines, earmarked for inner-city precincts remained unused on election day. Officials have no explanation. Archive
12/12/2004 Malfeasance OH Greene County. Voting records, which had been denied to recount volunteers, were left unlocked and unattended overnight. Story Archive
12/20/2004 Malfeasance OH Richard Hayes Phillips, Ph.D., lead statistician for the election challenge lawsuit brought by the Alliance for Democracy, now in the Ohio State Supreme Court, reveals evidence indicating that some of the electronic voting machines in Mahoning County, Ohio were set up to have a default presidential candidate. In other words, voters who chose not to vote for a presidential candidate and voters who tried unsuccessfully to vote for the candidate of their choice unknowingly cast votes for the default candidate. Story
11/2/2006 Malfeasance OH Cuyahoga County. Severe security lapse. County officials used ordinary laptops, vulnerable to viruses, to retrieve and archive data from memory cards, which Princeton researchers have shown are capable of carrying viruses that would infect voting machines. “I first raised concerns to the Cuyahoga County Board of Election in mid-Summer, after Secretary of State Blackwell released an advisory about transferring electronic election data to CD ROM. After I witnessed the transfer, I raised concerns a potential security breach to Cuyahoga Board of Elections Chairman Bennett and the rest of the board on October 2nd,” said Adele Eisner. “Unfortunately, the board simply defended its dangerous practice." Story
9/22/2009 Malfeasance OH Lucas County. 166 absentee ballots were left uncounted last Tuesday, Director Linda Howe said Monday. She said two employees, a Republican and a Democrat, have received reprimands in their files and have come up with procedures to avoid a recurrence of the neglected ballots. Story Archive
11/2/2004 Paper ballots (late) OH A woman sued elections officials Tuesday on behalf of Ohio voters who claim they did not receive their absentee ballots on time, seeking permission for them to be able to cast provisional ballots at the polls. SoS office said state law says that if a board of elections sent someone an absentee ballot, that person cannot try to vote at a polling place. Story Archive
11/8/2007 Poor design OH ESS Seneca County. ES&S M100 optical scanners could not be programmed to handle both the general election and primary election occuring at the same time. Only the general election ballots could be scanned at the polling place. The primary election ballots had to be taken back to the central office and fed into the machine one by one. Story Archive
10/1/2008 Poor design OH Ashtabula, Athens, Auglaize, Champaign, Delaware, Lawrence, Logan, Madison, Ottawa, Seneca, Shelby, and Wyandot Counties split the presidential race over two columns, a design that often confuses voters and causes them to vote twice for the contest. The Brennan Center sent a letter of concern to the SoS, who passed it on to the counties. Story
11/11/2004 Provisional ballots OH Cuyahoga County. A new ruling about counting provisional ballots was instituted on November 9 at 2:30 pm. The new ruling in Cuyahoga County mandates that provisional ballots in yellow packets must be Rejected if there is no date of birth on the packet. The Free Press obtained copies of the original "Provisional Verification Procedure" from Cuyahoga County which stated "Date of birth is not mandatory and should not reject a provisional ballot." The original procedure required the voter?s name, address and a signature that matched the signature in the county?s database. One of the clerks said, "This is new. This just came down. They just changed it in the last thirty minutes." Story
11/12 -- Counties that were confused about whether to validate provisional ballots that don't have voters' dates of birth on them were told Friday by the secretary of state's office in a conference call to allow those ballots. Story
11/16/2004 Provisional ballots OH Of the 11 counties that have completed checking ballots, 81 percent, or 4,277 out of 5,310 ballots, are valid, according to a survey Monday by The Associated Press. Most of the counties are in rural areas. Story
11/20/2004 Provisional ballots OH Stark County (Canton). The Election Board reluctantly followed the law and rejected provisional ballots cast at the wrong precinct in the right polling place. Up until this year, they remade a ballot that was cast in the wrong precinct, meaning that the person?s vote would be put toward the appropriate races in the correct precinct. Story Archive
11/24/2004 Provisional ballots OH Cuhoga County. 8,099 provisional ballots (about 1/3 of those cast) have been ruled invalid because the voter wasn't registered or was registered in the wrong precinct. In 2000, about 17% were ruled invalid. Story
11/7/2006 Provisional ballots OH Diebold Cuyahoga County. Candice Hoke, director of Cleveland State’s Center for Election Integrity, said some of her public monitors reported that poll workers were incorrectly requiring some voters who used paper ballots to fill out a provisional voter form. Voting results for any of those forms won’t be counted until the official count begins 11 days after the election. Story Archive
10/26/2004 Registration delays OH Cuyahoga County. The Cuyahoga County Board of Elections has botched the registrations of more than 10,000 voters, preventing them from heading to the ballot box next week, according to a lawsuit filed late Monday. Story
11/7/2006 Registration errors OH Cuyahoga County. Voter's name wasn't on the rolls, even though he had a card telling him his polling place. County officials determined that he was classified as an inactive voter, even though he voted in the May primary. Story Archive
11/4/2009 Registration errors OH Lorain County. Seven misprinted signature books contained information from the 2008 election. Some had only a few outdated pages. In other cases, the entire book was outdated. Problems with the books forced some voters to cast provisional ballots. Story Archive
10/8/2004 Registration fraud OH Hamilton County is investigating 19 registrations that may be for non-existent people. Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) turned in cards with similar handwriting and false addresses. Story
11/3/2004 Too few ballots OH In Toledo, "a lot of people just walked away, saying they had to go to work," said voter Anthony Bumphis, who said he waited for more than an hour at Gesu School on Parkside Boulevard in West Toledo when it temporarily ran out of ballots. Story Archive
3/4/2008 Too few ballots OH Sandusky County Board of Elections office says they ran out of ballots at around 11:30 a.m. The ballots were mostly Democratic. They printed up new ballots, but due to equipment malfunctions, they fell behind in delivering the new ballots to the precincts. As a result some Sandusky County residents chose to leave before voting. The board of elections has petitioned a judge to extend voting hours in Sandusky County to at least 9 p.m. Secretary of State Brunner extended the polling hours until 9:00. Story Archive Archive2
11/3/2009 Too few ballots OH Summit County. Polling places in at least five communities -- Green, Norton, Springfield, Tallmadge and Twinsburg, ran out of ballots Tuesday evening. Would-be voters said they left sites without voting, not knowing when additional ballots would be delivered. Story Archive
11/3/2004 Too few machines OH In Franklin and Knox counties, where voters use touch-screen units, long lines developed and voters turned to a federal judge for help as the time grew near for polls to close. To speed the voting, some of those voters were given paper ballots. Story Archive
11/14/2004 Too few machines OH Polling places in Northeast Ohio had half the number of voting machines that were needed. This caused a bottleneck at polling stations, and many people left without voting. Story Archive
11/4/2008 Too few machines OH ESS Ohio County. Long lines, with voters complaining that more e-voting machines aren't available. Toni Chieffalo, elections coordinator for Ohio County, said she had requested 10 more machines for Ohio County, but the request wasn't approved by the Secretary of State because the machines were slightly different. Story Archive
11/4/2009 Too few machines OH Diebold Lorain County. Board of Elections Director Jose Candelario underestimated the turnout and seven polling places had too few e-voting machines. 18 additional machines were delivered during the day to reduce the long lines. Story Archive
10/14/2004 Vote suppression OH Knox County. Long lines caused by 989 registered voters and only two machines. Story
11/3/2004 Vote suppression OH Cincinnati. "We've had reports that poll workers aren't doing a very good job putting people in the right lines for their precincts," said Molly Lombardi, a spokeswoman for the Election Protection Coalition. "People stood in line for over an hour in the rain in some places only to find they were in the wrong line. A lot of them gave up and went home." Story Archive
11/13/2004 Vote suppression OH Columbus. Carol Shelton was the presiding judge at a Columbus precinct with three machines for 1,500 registered voters. At her home precinct in Clintonville, she said there were three machines for 730 voters. "I called to get more machines and got connected to Matt Damschroder, and after lots of hassle he sent a fourth machine," she said. "It did not put a dent in the long lines." Story Archive
11/24/2004 Vote suppression OH Columbus. Sworn testimony shows a disparity between the number of voting machines provided to different precincts. With record turnouts, some precincts had fewer machines than in the past. Story
12/11/2004 Vote suppression OH Summit County. In response to a mandate from Blackwell ... or to save the tax payers' money ... or in anticipation of new voting equipment -- the county elections board members don't agree -- but whatever the reason, the county reduced it's polling places by about one-quarter, causing long lines on Nov. 2, especially in the city's predominantly African-American wards. Story1 Archive1 Story2 Archive2
11/3/2009 Vote suppression OH Hamilton County. The three candidates for Columbia Township Trustee were mistakenly left off the ballot. The board of elections decided to count only the ballots already cast in other areas instead of voting again to include the Fairfax residents. Officials did not offer additional explanation about their decision. Story Archive Story2 Archive2
10/23/2004 Voter challenges OH The Republican party took formal steps to place thousands of recruits inside polling places on Election Day to challenge the qualifications of voters they suspect are not eligible to cast ballots. Story Archive
10/24/2004 Voter challenges OH GOP files excessive registration challenges. Story1 Story2 Archive1
Records: 881-920 of 1280
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