County Polling Places to Stay Open Until 9 P.M.
By Debbi Wilgoren and Miranda Spivack
Washington Post Staff Writers
Tuesday, September 12, 2006; 2:38 PM
Polling stations in Montgomery County will remain open an hour later than usual tonight, to accommodate voters who were turned away from the polls this morning because of a glitch that left computerized voting machines across the county inoperable.
Circuit Court Judge Eric M. Johnson issued the order about 2 p.m., in response to a petition by the Montgomery County Board of Elections.
Boxes of automated voting cards that are required to work the electronic machines were mistakenly left behind in a Rockville warehouse in the run-up to Election Day, elections officials said.
Early morning voters were forced to cast provisional, hand-written ballots at Montgomery County’s 238 polling places, while election staffers scrambled to deliver the forgotten voting cards as quickly as possible. Several precincts ran out of the paper ballots, and workers from at least one precinct went to a copy shop to make more. Some poll workers, according to witnesses, did not know the provincial ballots were an option and told voters to try again later in the day.
The cards had been delivered to all polling stations by 9:50 a.m., election officials said, and voting returned to normal. But for those who had shown up as early as 7 a.m. to cast their ballots, it was too little, too late.
“This is just obscene that we can live in one of the most forward-thinking counties in the country, and have so many advantages open to us, and for some reason we can’t get our polls to work,” said campaign volunteer Valerie Coll, who was stationed outside Cannon Road Elementary School in Silver Spring.
Maryland Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. said he was deeply disturbed by what happened in the county, and by lesser reports of voting irregularities in Prince George’s County, Baltimore and elsewhere around the state.
“That’s negligence,” he said of the undelivered cards, speaking outside Green Street Elementary School in Annapolis, where he cast his own ballot without difficulty. “That’s inexcusable.”
Voters who encountered problems anywhere in Maryland should call 1-800-811-8336 to report them, Ehrlich said.
The Montgomery County Board of Elections met in emergency session and voted 3 to 0 to petition the Circuit Court of Montgomery County to extend polling hours from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. Election officials apologized profusely for the mix-up but said the provincial ballots that had been cast this morning would not be counted for several days because of a lack of available staff.
Voters who are in line at the polls by 8 p.m. tonight will be permitted to vote on the electronic machines, said board chair Nancy H. Dacek, a Republican former city council member. But those arriving after 8 p.m. will have to use provisional ballots, just like those citizens who showed up first thing this morning, she said.
“We regret this very, very much. Call it clerical error, call it what you will, everybody is beside themselves and very upset about it,” she said.
She said precinct workers began calling the board’s officers at 6:15 a.m. to report that the cards—which function like ATM cards and are handed to each voter as he or she arrives at the polls—had not been delivered. Voters are supposed to insert their cards into the electronic voting machines so that the correct ballot will appear on screen. Without the cards, the voting machines cannot work.
The voting problems could negatively impact candidates for statewide office whose base of support is strongest in Montgomery County and who were counting on strong voter turnout in the Washington suburbs to offset the totals of opponents from other parts of the state.
“Absolutely you have to be concerned. That potentially disenfranchises a great many voters,” said Mike Morrill, a spokesman for Montgomery County State’s Attorney Douglas Gansler, who is competing against Baltimore attorney Stuart Simms to be the Democratic nominee for state attorney general.
Gansler appeared at a late morning news conference at Leisure World in Silver Spring along with several other Democrats—Peter Franchot, a Montgomery County delegate to the General Assembly vying for the nomination for Maryland comptroller; US. Senate candidate Josh Rales; county executive candidates Isaiah Leggett and Steve Silverman and state’s attorney candidate John McCarthy—to demand that voting hours be extended. The candidates expressed outrage at the glitch and urged with voters who were turned away this morning to return and try again later in the day.
“You have people who have been disenfranchised already,” Franchot said. “What happened this morning is unacceptable. It’s just wrong.”
Rales, a Potomac businessman whose base of support is in the Washington suburbs, was consulting with lawyers this morning to prepare a lawsuit, if necessary, to keep the polls open late. “This is the one time when citizens have a way to have an impact on their government,” Rales spokeswoman Alyson Chadwick said.”
Voting was delayed at about 15 or 20 polling places in Prince George’s County as well, officials said, because new electronic voter authorization books either were not operable or had not been delivered when the polls opened, officials said.
Among the precincts affected were University Park Elementary School, Kettering Baptist Church in Largo or Valley View Elementary in Oxon Hill, campaign workers and voters said.
Long lines formed, and some polling stations told voters to try again later. Others began offering provisional ballots, which in some cases were in short supply. Alisha Alexander, Prince George’s deputy elections administrator, said most of the problems occurred in the northern part of the county.
At Valley View, voters were told the voting machines were not available, said Oxon Hill resident Jennifer Campbell-Adams, who showed up to vote at about 7 a.m. “They actually turned people away,” Campbell-Adams said. “Then they told people to come back, and gave them provisional ballots.”
She said the precinct had only 100 paper ballots, and appeared likely to run out before the electronic machines were working.
Donna Edwards, who is running against incumbent Albert Wynn for the Democratic nomination to the 4th district Congressional seat, said she also heard from voters who were told to come back later. “This is not Florida,” fumed Edwards, referring to widespread irregularities in that state in recent presidential elections. “They should have been asked to fill out provisional ballots.”
State Senator Paul Pinsky said one of his constituents was not only rejected by the new voting system but she was also unable to cast a provisional ballot. “She had no choice but to go home,” he said, standing outside Charles Carroll Middle School. “I am really surprised. This is not acceptable.”
But problems were far more widespread in neighboring Montgomery.
At Luxmanor Elementary School in Rockville, Larry Schleifer cast a provisional ballot, then groused that it would not be counted along with the electronic tallies expected later in the day. He said he was frustrated that no one had crossed his name off the voter registry when he was handed a paper ballot and was concerned that election workers would not keep track of who had done what.
“What’s going to stop somebody from voting twice?” he fumed. “I think it’s unconscionable that this has happened.”
County councilmember Howard Denis said he was unable to vote at his Friendship Heights polling station until about 10 a.m., when the missing cards were delivered. He said he met an elderly veteran who had been given a provisional ballot and found it confusing and difficult to fill out. “It’s embarrassing. There’s got to be accountability,” Denis said. “This is some celebration of democracy, a day after 9/11.”
Bernice Wuethrich, voting at Grace United Methodist Church on New Hampshire Avenue, said she cast her ballot on the electronic machines after they were up and running. But even then, she said, not everyone’s name was coming up on the computer.
“They don’t have a printed list” of eligible voters, “they don’t have a backup,” Wuethrich said. “So when the computer goes down, they can’t even look at a list to see who’s eligible to vote.”
Louise Bradley said she arrived at her polling station after the electronic cards had been delivered, but her card did not work properly. When she got to the section of the ballot listing candidates for the Democratic central committee, it was already filled out. Bradley said she had to remove the computer’s choices and insert her own.
At Kensington Parkwood Elementary, officials ran out of paper ballots around 8:30 a.m. and voters were turned away, said Democratic precinct chairwoman Liz Cummings.
“So many of these races are so close. . . . Voters are yelling at us and yelling at the election judges,” Cummings said as she implored voters to return. “Some people said, ‘I have a job and can’t come back,’ ” said Cummings, who herself had to leave at 2:30 p.m. to catch a plane. “If I can’t vote, I am going to be sobbing,” she said.
Staff writers Christian Davenport, Hamil R. Harris, Ernesto Londoño, Ann Marimow, Matthew Mosk, Philip Rucker, Steve Vogel and Ovetta Wiggins contributed to this report.
© 2006 The Washington Post Company