Sporadic voting problems had limited impact on election outcome

Thousands of voters around the country encountered malfunctioning voting machines, website crashes and delayed polling place openings on Election Day, but those problems appeared to be more sporadic than systemic — and there was no immediate indication that they influenced the outcome of any of the elections in the midterm cycle.

The Election Protection Coalition, a voter advocacy group, said it had received more than 18,000 calls to a hotline set up for voters who had election questions or encountered problems at the polls. The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which is a part of the coalition, said that represented a nearly 40 percent increase from the 13,000 calls to the hotline in the 2010 midterms.

"What we’ve seen today highlights how critical it is for our elected officials to make a priority of passing reforms to address enduring problems," Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law said in a press release Tuesday night.

Georgia officials scrambled to fix a page on the Secretary of State's website that was supposed to help voters find their polling locations, but instead directed many users to an error message.

The problem created "unnecessary confusion," especially in a state roiled by a legal dispute about voter registration, said Rashad Robinson, executive director of ColorofChange.org, a civil rights organization.

Advocates for the New Georgia Project, a voter registration program that encourages participation by minorities in the state's politics, said 40,000 new registrations did not appear on the voting rolls.

The Associated Press detailed the experience of one voter — a college student in Georgia — who had changed her address to be able to cast her vote closer to her university, but was told instead to cast a provisional ballot because her name did not appear on the eligible list. It wasn't until she showed officials confirmation of her registration that they found her name on an alternate list. 

"It was pretty overwhelming and a little discouraging because I thought my vote wouldn't even matter," said 18-year-old Diamond Walton. 

The DeKalb County elections office was crowded with people whose names weren't on the list of eligible voters even though they've voted in previous elections. Some were told they were ineligible because they had not updated their voter registrations to match their driver's licenses.

After several polling places in Hartford, Connecticut, failed to open on time, a state judge ordered two to remain open a half-hour after their designated closing time. Democratic Gov. Dannel Malloy argued that some people had been deprived of their right to vote. Malloy and Republican challenger Tom Foley were locked in a race that was too close to call early Wednesday morning.

There were also reports of problems in Florida, where the gubernatorial campaign of Democrat Charlie Crist sought unsuccessfully to extend voting in Broward County by two hours. His campaign alleged that malfunctions with some addresses caused many voters to be sent to incorrect precincts, where they were ultimately unable to vote.

The Florida secretary of state said there had been isolated voting problems, but nothing systemic. Crist lost to Republican incumbent Rick Scott.

Elections officials in Virginia, where a closely contested Senate race dragged into Wednesday morning, acknowledged problems with more than 30 electronic voting machines in the area of Virginia Beach and Newport News. The elections department said that the broken machines had been taken out of service, and that there were enough working machines on hand to prevent any voting delays.

In New Mexico, a state judge ordered Sandoval County to issue provisional ballots after lawyers for Gov. Susana Martinez's campaign complained that voters were being turned away due to software problems.

Beyond technical glitches, the midterm elections Tuesday had also been the first test of the impact of new voter identification laws in many states that opponents feared would disenfranchise minorities and the poor.

In Texas, where the U.S. Supreme Court last month let stand a strict photo ID law, there were reports of "voter confusion about how and whether their votes would be counted," according to Election Protection. The law had not previously been used in congressional elections or a high-profile race for governor.

However, early indications are that despite some confusion, those laws had less impact on participation than what critics had predicted. Election Protection said it fielded some 500 calls from people in Texas who did not have an approved ID or were confused about the new requirements. 

Al Jazeera and wire services