Scattered E-Voting Glitches Reported In Eight StatesScattered E-Voting Glitches Reported In Eight States

Problems involving e-voting equipment in multiple precincts in at least eight states so far today caused polling snafus, including delayed poll openings, according to watchdog organizations monitoring midterm election activities.

Among the top states in which voters have reported having problems related to e-voting equipment "malfunctions" are Ohio, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Tennessee, Florida, Indiana, Illinois and Utah, says Matt Zimmerman, a staff attorney specializing in e-voting issues at nonprofit organization Electronic Frontier Foundation.

"While I don't have the numbers in front of me, I wouldn't be at all surprised to see machine-related problems of some sort in most or all states," said Zimmerman in an e-mail to information.

The bulk of the equipment problems reported were related to touch-screen voting, or direct-recording electronic equipment, rather than optical scanning gear.

In Pennsylvania, polling places in Lancaster and Lebanon counties will be open an extra hour, until 9 p.m. tonight, to make up for delays this morning related to minor technical glitches with e-voting machines, says Cathy Ennis, deputy press secretary for Pennsylvania's Department of State.

Those e-voting machine problems were caused by human error, Ennis says. In Lebanon County, which uses e-voting systems by Election Systems & Software, some precincts experienced half-hour delays in opening this morning because of time discrepancies that occurred when election workers programmed the machines to reflect the changeover from Daylight Savings Time.

"We've got 9,200 polling places in the state and 25,000 voting machines in place, and the problems have occurred in a very small number of precincts," Ennis says.

In fact, out of the nation's 183,000 precincts, "we haven't seen the widespread problems" that some people had predicted, says Tom Wilkey, executive director of the Elections Assistance Commission, a federal agency overseeing the Help America Vote Act, which provided states with funding to replace their lever and punch-card voting equipment after the Presidential election debacle in 2000.

This midterm election, about 42% of Americans are registering their votes with optical scanning equipment, while 41% are using direct-recording electronic, or touch-screen, systems, says a spokesman for EAC.