Update 5:15 p.m. (E.T.) The voter registration system is down in Colorado, Lynn Bartels, of the Colorado Secretary of State’s office, wrote on Twitter. Journalists in Colorado report clerks can’t process mail-in ballots and people voting in person must use provisional ballots.
Update 4:55 p.m. (E.T.) In Coral Springs, Florida, a volunteer for the Hillary Clinton campaign sent writer Ari Berman photos of Donald Trump supporters apparently blocking the entrance to polls and intimidating voters. Berman later tweeted that police came to the polling place and took over control of the situation.
Other problems have been reported in the sunshine state. The Palm Beach County Sheriff’s office reported via Twitter that they were responding to a disturbance at a polling site in Lake Worth where two men got into an argument and one of them struck the other. That man is now facing charges. In Miami-Dade county, people were apparently seen “yelling” at voters in polling places and “using megaphones aggressively,” The Washington Post reported.
Update 4:10 p.m. (E.T.) The North Carolina Board of Elections said in a press release that it would meet later today to consider any requests to extend voting hours. Technical problems in Durham County led to long wait times and officials having to use paper poll books. The state BOE said it had been in constant communications with officials in Durham County and that officials there have not reported “significant wait times” to them. However, state officials are calling on the BOE to extend voting hours in the county.
Update 3:30 p.m. (E.T.) In New York City, where both candidates are hosting their victory or “loss” parties, Mayor Bill de Blasio went on a Twitter rant calling on state politicians to immediately reform the state’s voting system Tuesday, amid widespread complaints from NYC residents of long lines and broken ballot scanners. Similar problems were reported in the borough of Brooklyn.
Update 3 p.m. (E.T.) A polling place at Dunkin Donuts Center in Providence, Rhode Island was briefly evacuated.
Update 1:45 p.m. (E.T.) In Texas, the election protection coalition has received reports of long lines, inoperable voting machines and numerous reports about the voter ID law. The polarizing nature of the election, combined with a modified voter ID law, has created a recipe for voting issues in the state. The death of an election judge in Dallas County led to extended voting hours.
A man in Texas, with a gun and a sign saying “F*****s vote dem,” was released and no charges have been filed, Andrew Kragie of the Houston Chronicle reported.
Update 1:15 p.m. (E.T.) In New Jersey, a sign that told voters they needed an ID to cast their ballot was taken down in the town of Metuchen. That’s just one of the problems that have been documented in the state. Long lines were reported in Jersey City where poll workers brought in at least one additional voting booth. In Connecticut, there have already been multiple voting issues across the state. Hartford had issues with wrong ballots being sent to a polling place, a small fire temporarily disrupted voting in Westport and a person was struck by a car near a polling place in Glastonbury. Some Naugatuck residents who registered to vote at the DMV or AAA were told they weren’t registered and were sent to do same-day registration. In New Haven, some voters had to wait up to an hour to cast their ballots in the morning as lines stretched down multiple streets.
Update 12:20 p.m. (E.T.) Since polls across the country opened, voters, as expected, have been reporting long lines and informing their local board of elections about numerous problems they are experiencing. Problems were reported in the battleground states of Pennsylvania and North Carolina as well as in Maryland and New Jersey.
- In Pennsylvania, there are reports of people blocking polls doors and handing our fliers at various Philadelphia precincts. Other problems in the state include reports of machines not working, lack of access to polling sites and election workers not showing up.
- In Durham County, North Carolina, the local board of elections reported on Twitter that due to technical problems, it was directed by the state board of election to use paper poll books. Officials said the change did not cause any interruption to voting.
- In an incident in Hasbrouck Heights, New Jersey, a man holding a Donald Trump sign was asked to back away from a polling location because he was standing too close. The man cooperated with police, there was no violence and no charges were filed.
- In Prince George’s County, Maryland, the local BOE informed the state board of reports that voters were becoming uncomfortable and intimidated by people taking their pictures.
What voters have been exposed to in the 2016 election has been unprecedented, and as the nation heads to cast their votes on Tuesday, problems at the polls are not limited to long lines and faulty voting machines. Fears persist about voter intimidation at the polls by far-right groups.
“There are some real concerns about what will happen tomorrow that I haven’t seen before,” Lauren Jones, civil rights national council at the Anti-Defamation League, told Patch.
Jones pointed to the case of a black church in Mississippi that was burned recently and had the words “Vote Trump” spray-painted on the side. She also pointed to a man who was quoted in the Boston Globe as saying he would engage in racial profiling and make people “nervous.” Jones said there’s an atmosphere this election that we haven’t seen before, as well as rhetoric from a campaign that we haven’t seen before.
Donald Trump has repeatedly said the election is rigged, while offering no proof for the claim, and has not said whether he will accept the results Nov. 8 should they not favor him, giving rise to beliefs among his supporters that there is voter fraud taking place and concurrently stirring fears that the actions of poll watchers could affect minority voters.
Far-right groups like the Oath Keepers and representatives of the website Right Stuff, which has been linked to the alt-right, are just a few groups that have announced to varying degrees plans about how they intend on patrolling polling locations on Tuesday.
The Oath Keepers, an organization of current and formerly serving military, police and first-responders, which is officially non-partisan, has detailed plans on its website about how a “rogue political party” plans to instigate violence against citizens not aligned with the party’s agenda, conduct voter fraud operations on an industrial scale and execute voter intimidation tactics at the polls Nov. 8. The group cites the sources for its information as “various news organizations, investigative journalist and other sources, including Project Veritas and WikiLeaks.”
Videos released by James O’Keefe of Project Veritas claim to show vote rigging on the part of Hillary Clinton and other Democrats. Snopes, the website that attempts to verify or debunk such stories, wrote that the October 2016 election-related sting videos reveal tidbits of selectively and (likely deceptively edited) footage absent of any context in which to evaluate them.
“Unless his organization releases the footage in full, undertaking a fair assessment of their veracity is all but impossible,” the Snopes assessment said.
In a call-to-action, Oath Keepers called the Project Veritas video the “smoking-gun confirmation” that widespread voter fraud is taking place.
“To this end, our significant capabilities in conducting covert operations, intelligence gathering, and investigation can and should be leveraged to counter actions of any political party or criminal gang that attempts to disenfranchise the citizens of our nation,” the call-to-action stated.
The group stated it was most concerned about expected attempts at voter fraud by “leftists,” but it would document any apparent attempt at voter fraud by anyone or any party. In October, The Washington Post reported the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law would ask the Department of Justice to investigate the group’s actions. Mark Pitcavage, who monitors extremism for the Anti-Defamation League, told the Post that the presence of the group, even if it follows the law, has the potential for intimidation as well as angry backlash from voters. The Southern Poverty Law Center notes that efforts by the group to thwart voter intimidation is likely to cause more problems, given its own history of frightening locals.
Most states have laws that allow for volunteers to watch the polls, but voter intimidation is a federal crime.
Patch will be updating this post as we get information about possible instances of voter intimidation and other problems at the polls.
Representative for the Right Stuff website detailed their plans to Politico for organizing poll watchers on election day but later said those plans were fabricated.
Another organization, Stop the Steal, which defines itself as “a grassroots organization devoted to maintaining the integrity of our electoral process,” has had more than 2,700 people who have registered so far to serve as poll watchers. The group is run by Roger Stone, a Trump ally.
Jones, of the ADL, told Patch that the group recently changed information on its website about what volunteers can or cannot do at the polls. Initially, it had announced plans to have its volunteers wear official-looking badges until the Huffington Post ran a story exposing the plans.
“The tenor of what they are doing has changed,” Jones said. But she says there is still concern about what the group is going to do.
Lawsuits filed by Democrats against the group in four states, asking for restraining orders against the organization, all fell through.
The election is also the first since a 2013 Supreme Court ruling that allowed nine states, mostly in the south, to change their election laws without advance federal approval. As explained by ProPublica, under Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, states and localities with a history of racial discrimination needed to get permission from the federal government to enact any changes to their voting laws, in a process called “preclearance.” While Section 5 of the VRA remains intact, the ruling revoked Section 4, the portion that explains which states and localities are subject to preclearance.
To that end, the decision has limited the ability of the Department of Justice to send election observers to the polls to deter voter intimidation. Vanita Gupta, the top civil rights official at the DOJ, told The New York Times that lawyers with the department had interpreted the decision to mean that officials could send observers only into jurisdictions where there was already a relevant court order regarding voting practices. The Times notes that the DOJ will only send observers inside polling places in four states, compared to 2012 when it sent observers inside in 13 states. The DOJ announced Monday where it would be stationing personnel.
Jones said there is a “real need to fully restore the VRA.”
For those who experience problems on Election Day, the Civil Rights Division staff members of the DOJ will be available to receive complaints related to possible violations of federal voting rights laws. Another resource available to voters is the Election Protection Project, a national non-partisan voter protection effort led by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law. Lawyers from around the country will be working to ensure all voters have an equal opportunity to participate. Those that need help can call call Election Protection at 866-OUR-VOTE (or 888-VE-Y-VOTA for help in Spanish.) Both the DOJ and the Election Protection project remind voters to also alert local authorities about any problems they face on Election Day.
Jones, who is participating in the Election Protection project, says voters who experience problems should first try to see if there is a legal problem and should also inform people about the problems they are facing.
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