Election 2018 Voting Problems: Long Lines, Poll Worker Charged

Long lines and failing voting machines were among the most common problems faced by voters across the country as they cast their votes in the 2018 midterm election. And as polls began to close in the country, at least two states extended voting hours in some precincts.

In Texas, a judge has ordered nine voting locations in Harris County to remain open an extra hour until 8 p.m. and in Georgia, three precincts in Gwinnett County and three precincts in Fulton County remained open after polls closed.

Some of the latest problems reported at the polls include a Texas poll worker who is accused of making racist comments towards a voter and an elections judge in the Pittsburgh area who was removed from duty in response to claims she was impaired.

The poll worker in Texas accused of making racist remarks was identified as Juanita Barnes and has been charged with misdemeanor assault.

In New York City, lines reportedly stretched around buildings and there are multiple reports from voters about problems with ballot-scanning machines. Voters who spoke to Patch described a chaotic scene at their New York precincts, which included ballots spilling out of a voting machine and a lack of information. The City Council speaker has called on the executive director of New York City's Board of Elections to resign.

There are also several reports of long lines and malfunctioning voting equipment in the St. Louis area that Patch is working to verify. In Mississippi, Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann told media outlets "there are lines everywhere" and problems have been reported with voting machines. Similar problems were also reported in Georgia.

The North Carolina State Board of Elections reported that ballots in some precincts cannot be fed through tabulators due to high humidity levels. North Carolina officials said all ballots will be counted and local officials have been told to ensure voting areas are kepts as cool and dry as possible.

SEE ALSO: 2018 Midterm Election Results: Vote A Referendum On 'Trump's GOP'

In Illinois, a DuPage County Forest Preserve Commissioner candidate said he was asked for two forms of ID and then told that he was not an active voter. In the Mount Greenwood neighborhood of Chicago, a woman who went to vote just after the polls opened Tuesday told Patch that some voters were given the wrong ballots.

In Baltimore, vandalism forced officials to announce an emergency polling place change. An in one Baltimore polling place, voters had to wait because of a technical difficulty and then some were given incomplete ballots, according to voters.

In a Pennsylvania state legislature race, the first 100 voters at a precinct in Phoenexville were given the incorrect ballot. Also in Pennsylvania, a sign found outside a polling place in Malvern raised concerns about voter intimidation. Another case of possible voter intimidation was reported in Virginia Beach where a man was wearing a Trump mask.

In Somerset County, New Jersey, a polling place opened an hour and 15 minutes late, causing voters to wait and some to leave out of frustration. Another issue in New Jersey was caused thanks to a new law that mandates all voters who voted by mail in the 2016 General Election be sent a mail-in ballot for the 2018 General Election, even if they did not request one.

Patch is partnering with ProPublica's Electionland project to report on problems voters encounter at the polls on Nov. 6 and we want to know if you see any shenanigans. Here's how you can report what you see to Electionland:

• SMS: Send the word VOTE, VOTA (for Spanish) or 投票 (for Chinese) to 81380 (standard text message rates apply).
• WhatsApp: Send the word VOTE, VOTA (for Spanish) or 投票 (for Chinese) to 1-850-909-8683.
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• Submit a tip through this form.

See Patch's previous report on how strict voting laws could prevent eligible voters from casting their ballots:

The midterm elections could transfer power in at least one legislative body of Congress, elevate a number of women and minority candidates to office and see history be made in races at all levels of government. While the election could significantly alter the makeup of local, state and federal governments, questions remain about ever-stricter voting laws.

The main question: How many eligible voters will be prevented from voting?

In the Georgia governor’s race, Democratic candidate Stacey Abrams will make history if elected, becoming the country’s first black female governor. Her opponent, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, has come under pressure — recently by former President Jimmy Carter — to resign after it was reported that his office is holding up 53,000 voter registrations under the state’s exact-match law. The Associated Press found that nearly 70 percent of those registrations belonged to black voters.

The exact-match law requires information on voter registration applications to match “driver’s licenses, state IDs or Social Security records,” according to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. As the AJC explains, “registrations can be stalled for several reasons, including a missing hyphen in a last name, a discrepancy between a maiden name and a married name, or a misspelling in government records.”

“You have the fox watching the hen house, that is to say an individual who is himself running for governor, being recalcitrant in terms of certifying these registrations,” Prof. Theodore Shaw, Director of the Center for Civil Rights at the University of North Carolina, said, adding that only after some lawsuits is there the possibility of seeing movement on these registrations.

Two rulings issued the Friday before election day have been unfavorable for Kemp. One federal judge said voters flagged as potential non-citizens under the law can present documentation directly to a poll worker, according to The Washington Post. Kemp’s office had required that the 3,000 or so individuals go through a deputy registrar. In a press release issued after the ruling, Kemp’s office clarified that proof of citizenship can be verified by poll managers. And in the second ruling, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals refused to stay a ruling that requires election officials to give voters a chance to prove their identity if their applications or absentee ballots are rejected because of mismatched signatures, according to the ACLU.

Georgia has also purged 1.5 million voters from the rolls between 2012 and 2016, double the amount of voters purged between 2008 and 2012, a report found.

The report from the Brennan Center for Justice identified Georgia as “one of the most aggressive purgers.” Before the 2013 Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder, states like Georgia that had a history of racial discrimination were required to get preclearance from the federal government before making changes to voting laws or practices. The report from the Brennan Center found that purge rates after 2012 in jurisdictions previously subject to preclearance increased more than in jurisdictions not subject to preclearance.

Tell Patch If You See Shenanigans At The Polls

The Brennan Center report found that purge rates in the country are higher than a decade ago. Ohio’s practice of purging voters was upheld by the Supreme Court this year. But an emergency court ruling issued less than a week before election day will require provisional ballots cast by purged voters to be counted provided they meet certain conditions.

“Although a higher removal rate is not inherently bad, more purging means increased potential for eligible voters to be removed, especially given that we identified no state with the desired level of voter protections against purges,” the report said.

The Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder struck down section 4 of the Voting Rights Act, the provision that established the formula for determining which jurisdictions were covered under section 5 of the act and required to get preclearance from the federal government, Shaw explained.

“It left section 5 theoretically intact,” Shaw said. “But struck down the coverage formula on the theory that it no longer was justified given the passage of time and changed conditions in the south, notwithstanding Congress’ detailed findings in 2006 that underlaid the extension of section 5 and the coverage formula.”

Shaw said that not surprisingly, immediately after the Supreme Court decision, some of the jurisdictions that had been covered under section 4 began to enact provisions that were no longer subject to scrutiny by either the Department of Justice or the courts.

“And these provisions aimed to make it more difficult to if not deny effectively the right to vote for people of color, African Americans or Latinos in particular in some of these formerly covered jurisdictions,” Shaw said.

Ari Berman, a senior reporter at Mother Jones covering voting rights, said in a recent appearance on NPR that Georgia first tried to put an “exact-match” policy into place in 2009, before the Supreme Court decision. Saying the policy was discriminatory to minority voters, the federal government blocked it, Berman said. Per the AJC, In 2010, the DOJ approved the exact-match system but just last year, Kemp’s office settled a lawsuit that alleged the policy was disproportionately affecting minority voters and agreed to stop applying it. Later in 2017, the exact-match law passed the state legislature and was signed into law by Gov. Nathan Deal.

Georgia is not the only state to enact policies that might never have been approved by the federal government.

“What we’re seeing right now in the lead up to the midterm elections and what we’ve seen since Shelby County is a pattern of denials of the right to vote or other efforts to make it more difficult to vote, particularly for people of color,” Shaw said.

In North Carolina, a voter ID law signed by that state’s former Republican governor, Pat McCrory, was struck down by a federal court in 2016, which found that the law was enacted with “discriminatory intent.” Whether the photo ID requirement should be a part of the state constitution is now on the ballot in North Carolina. And in voter purges in North Carolina, “voters of color were over-represented among the purged group,” according to the Brennan Center. In Texas, a revised voter ID law was upheld by an appeals court this year, overruling a lower court that found changes to the law did not negate the original bill’s discriminatory purpose. Yet another voter ID law in North Dakota could disenfranchise Native Americans.

Shaw says people find it difficult to understand what the issue is with voter ID laws since we are used to showing identification for all kinds of things like getting on a plane or purchasing something with a credit card.

“But voting is different,” he said, adding that the assumption used to justify voter ID laws is that there is a significant if not massive amount of in-person voter fraud.

“There’s absolutely no evidence that supports that,” Shaw said.

A compilation by the Brennan Center points to recent research on the issue that shows minimal instances of voter fraud.

In a politics chat, editors and contributors at the website 538 discussed how much voting restrictions affect elections. Dan Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania and a contributor to the website, said in the chat that voter ID laws don’t have a large enough effect to swing elections “in any but the very closest races.” But Hopkins noted that someone being denied the right to vote is still an important issue regardless of the election outcome. The contributors to the chat also discussed the possibility that restrictive laws could mobilize voters they affect in the short-term and that the issue of voter ID laws appears to be becoming a partisan issue.

“Sadly, there is an assumption on the part of many Americans that not everybody who’s a citizen is entitled to vote,” Shaw said, adding that he wasn’t just talking about the denial of the right to vote to those with felony convictions.

“What we’re seeing now is an even broader assumption that for one reason or another, only those who are privileged in one way or another are entitled to vote and not everybody who is a citizen should be allowed to vote and if you can use your power, your raw power to push people out of electoral processes that’s OK, there’s nothing wrong with that,” he said.

Shaw said that he — along with many others — thinks that is and should be un-American.

“So this is a battle, it’s a long and old battle to protect the right to vote that we are engaged in right now and it is a form of dog-whistle politics, a lot of this is motivated by race but it’s a form of other kinds of discrimination that we’re seeing that as I say, should be un-American,” he said.

The Associated Press contributed reporting.

Photo by Michael Conroy/Associated Press