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Ballot Shortages Plague Ohio Election Amid Unusually Heavy Primary
Turnout
By Ian Urbina
The New York Times
Wednesday 05 March 2008
A federal judge in Ohio granted a request late Tuesday from Senator Barack
Obama's campaign to extend the voting hours in 21 precincts in Cleveland
by an extra 90 minutes because of a lack of paper ballots.
But because the order arrived after the polls had already closed, election
officials were only able to reopen 10 polling stations, according to the Ohio
secretary of state, Jennifer Brunner. That resulted in five additional votes
being cast, Ms. Brunner said.
After a recent state review of touch-screen machines that raised concern about
them, paper ballots were made available at all precincts for those voters who
wanted to use them. Many more voters took advantage of the option than officials
had predicted. The shortages of ballots were also caused by an unusually heavy
turnout, officials said.
The federal judge, Solomon Oliver, denied a similar request for other precincts
in Cuyahoga County, home to Cleveland, and for all precincts in Franklin County,
where the capital, Columbus, is located.
Ms. Brunner said that in Clermont and Summit Counties, paper ballots ran out
mostly due to a large number of independent and Republican voters crossing over
to vote in the Democratic primary. In both counties, only the Democratic ballots
ran out.
Heavy rain, sleet and ice forced at least 10 precincts to request permission
to move, yet the weather did not decrease turnout statewide. Voting officials
predicted that turnout would exceed 50 percent, which, they said, was at least
10 percent more than the turnout in the last two presidential primaries.
The number of requests for absentee ballots more than tripled those requested
in the May 2007 primary, to roughly 187,000, according to election officials.
The counting of ballots promised to be slow in part because of the shift away
from touch-screen machines and toward paper ballots.
In Texas, where voters faced clear skies and long lines, the campaign of Mr.
Obama's rival for the Democratic nomination, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton,
held a stormy conference call on Tuesday night to sound the alarm about what
officials said were numerous examples in Texas where "Obama supporters
have taken over the caucus and locked out Clinton supporters who were waiting
in line" and had done other things to circumvent party rules. The contest
in Texas involved a primary and caucuses.
Contributing to the circus atmosphere of the call, which was full of denunciations
against Obama supporters and proclamations about the democratic process, Bob
Bauer, a lawyer for the Obama campaign, unexpectedly got on the line and heatedly
challenged Mrs. Clinton's communications director, Howard Wolfson, who
responded in kind.
Hector Nieto, a spokesman for Texas Democratic Party, dismissed the charges
of widespread problems. Mr. Nieto said the party had revamped its electoral
and caucus system specifically to address concerns mentioned by the Clinton
campaign. There was a call bank at the party's headquarters staffed by
200 volunteers and a dozen lawyers, he said; by late Tuesday, it had fielded
just 12 calls from people complaining about specific problems with the caucus
system.
Nonetheless, there were many reports of overcrowded and chaotic caucuses, which
began when the balloting ended. At one caucus in Austin, well over 300 people
jammed into the Maplewood Elementary School cafeteria, quickly overwhelming
the space filled with low-slung institutional tables and benches and a sign
that said "Increase the Peace," a message heeded by the mellow crowd.
Workers there ran out of sign-in sheets and had to hastily copy more. Steve
Wilson, a writer and editor who signed in for Mr. Obama, said he had expected
a crowd but not one so large.
"They call this the Texas Two-Step, but it's more like the Cotton-Eyed
Joe," Mr. Wilson said, referring to an old-fashioned line dance that is
quite a bit more complicated than a two-step.
Turnout in Texas was projected to be above 26 percent, and there were widespread
reports of long lines remaining at closing time for the polls. Over three million
voters went to the polls, according to state election officials, and more Democrats
cast early ballots this year than voted in the entire primary four years ago.
A national voter hot line run by the Election Protection Coalition received
30 to 40 calls from Texas voters who had been turned away from caucus sites.
Some were rebuffed by fire marshals because of overcrowding, while others reported
being told by people patrolling the front doors of the sites that they had to
show proof of having voted to enter the location.
The order by the judge in Ohio to keep the polls open late seemed to have little
effect because so many of the voting places had shut down. At Giddings Elementary
School on the east side of Cleveland, workers had packed up the voting machines
when the order was issued.
Not far away, Patricia Adams, 29, said she received a telephone call at home
from the Obama campaign reminding her to vote and telling her that her polling
place at the Lonnie Burton Recreation Center would stay open late until 9 p.m.
But when she got there at 8:45 p.m., Ms. Adams said, the lights were off and
no one was there.
"I was real disappointed," she said. "I feel like they took
my voice away."
Of the more than 1,200 calls received by the election coalition's free
hot line, about 60 percent were from Ohio and 40 percent were from Texas, said
Jonah Goldman, a lawyer with the coalition. Most were from voters who wanted
to find out their polling location or who were confused about registration requirements.
Mr. Goldman said that the polling place at the Orchard Elementary School in
Cleveland ran out of ballots by 5:30 p.m. and that poll workers started handing
out ballots from another district that included candidates in a different Congressional
race.
Various precincts in Sandusky County ran out of ballots, and about 300 to 400
voters were turned away. All polling places stayed open there until 9 p.m.,
said Ms. Brunner, the Ohio secretary of state. She added that the ballot printing
devices in the county elections office broke down, so new ones could not be
supplied.
Ohio has experience with counting delays. In the 2004 general election, voters
waited more than a month for final results, and in the 2006 primary, when absentee
ballots had to be counted by hand, the tally took over five days.
A bomb threat at one school in Madison closed its polling place for an hour.
A power failure at a polling place in Lake County was taken in stride, as poll
workers ran extension cords from a nearby building and used flashlights to usher
voters along.
Jeff Ortega, a spokesman for the secretary of state's office, said the
reason for the increased absentee balloting was that more voters had become
acquainted with a 2005 law that eliminated restrictions that previously required
an excuse, like being ill, for people to be permitted to cast an absentee vote.
In Cuyahoga County, the secretary of state decided to count the ballots at
a central location. The county has had a long history of voting scandals, including
the conviction of several election workers on tampering charges after the 2004
presidential election and lines hours long to vote that year.
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Reporting was contributed by Bob Driehaus in Cincinnati, Andrew Jacobs
and Dan Levin in Cleveland, Randy Kennedy in Austin, Tex., Michael Luo in New
York and Michael Powell in San Antonio.
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