Voters waited in a long line with filled U.S. Senate ballots in hand Tuesday morning after a new voting machine broke down. That left the Frazer United Methodist Church polling place in Montgomery with one working tabulation machine for part of the morning. A poll worker at the site said the crowd was also bigger than expected, which made the problem worse. Workers had fixed the problem before 10 a.m., according to Christopher Turner, the assistant director of elections for Montgomery County. “It’s all brand new equipment (being used) in Montgomery County for the first time,” Turner said. “It’s kind of a shakedown cruise.” But it was far from the only problem on election day in Alabama.
National and state voting rights groups said by late afternoon they had received more than 300 calls from Alabama voters with concerns about long lines, confusion over ballots and complaints about not receiving their absentee ballots.
“The complaints came from voters across the state,” said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a nonpartisan group based in Washington, D.C. “They make clear that there’s much work’’ to do in Alabama in terms of voting rights issues.
Election Protection, a coalition of more than 100 civil rights and voting rights groups, set up its national hotline (866-OURVOTE) to field calls from Alabama voters. Clarke called the volume of calls “out of the ordinary. This is a very active day.’’
Full Article: Machine glitch, ballot confusion cause snags on election day.