More voting problems around the country

There are a few run-of-the mill problems around the country ... and others that are more interesting.

• In Collierville, Tenn., voter Carol Earle says she's been told she doesn't exist in the voter registry system, even though she claims to have voted in every election since her 18th birthday. Several other voters have been turned away from the Collierville Church of Christ because they're registered at a different precinct.
• Democratic votes just didn't count at one Chattanooga precinct. At the Carver Recreation Center this morning poll workers opened the doors for a line of people waiting to vote, a scene at many voting sites in Hamilton County. At this precinct that's in the heart of the Orchard Knob area, people who want to vote on the democratic primary ballot found out their vote would not register. The machine that processes ballots kept rejecting the democratic ballots. Poll workers say they called the Election Commission office, and they found out the Carver Recreation Center precinct doesn't have the correct democratic ballots for this neighborhood.
• New Jersey Gov. John Corzine was one of more than a dozen voters delayed or turned away from a polling place in Hoboken, NJ.
• Voters also waited in long lines in Illinois and Georgia.
• Eight precincts in Chicago had minor problems and a ninth was expected to stay open for several extra hours after misplaced voting equipment caused a nearly two-hour delay in opening the polls.
• In Georgia, where voters are now required to present photo identification, wait times in some areas were as long as 90 minutes because for the first time in a major election, poll workers had to compare IDs against computerized registration records.
• More than 5 million people have requested mail-in ballots in California, where there are 15.7 million registered voters. Election officials in the most populated and delegate-rich state in the country have said results may not be available until Wednesday or later. As much as 25 percent of the overall vote may go uncounted Tuesday night, officials said. A major cause of expected delays is late-arriving mail-in ballots, which will be counted only after precinct votes are tallied. Polls close at 8 p.m. PST.

And while the Cleveland, Ohio, area isn't voting today, they are preparing for their March elections. Election officials in Cuyahoga County are switching the printer of paper ballots. That decision comes after unreliable results occurred in test scans of already prepared ballots.

Elections officials blamed the ballots rather than the scanners that tabulate the votes.

The testing of ballots occurred in six consecutive tests last week. Now Cuyahoga County is planning to use the supplier of the county's absentee ballots.

    - Jim Grinstead

Comments

[Catherine]

Corzine could have gone back and voted under my name... my folks called me to tell me that my name is still on the list of registered voters in NJ, even though I've been a resident of TN for almost 13 years.