Live updates: Voting issues reported at polling places on Election Day
NEW YORK -- Across the country, Election Day is in full swing, and while it seems to be going smoothly overall, it hasn’t been without problems.
As millions of voters head to the polls to cast their ballots for president, their representatives in Congress and other elected officials, long lines, issues with machines, and delayed openings of polling places have been reported in a number of locations.
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The latest updates of reported problems at polling places can be found below:
6:59 p.m. CST -- Texas voter arrested
Fort Bend County Sheriff’s Office in Texas confirmed on Twitter that a person was arrested after attempting to vote twice. The person allegedly claimed he worked for Trump and was testing the system.
5:43 p.m. MST -- Democrats want 2 more Maricopa County vote hours
The Arizona Democratic Party is asking a judge to keep the polls in Maricopa County open for an extra two hours.
The filing just hours before Tuesday’s planned 7 p.m. poll closing is opposed by the county recorder.
Democratic Party spokeswoman Barb Lubin says complications with voting early in the morning prompted the lawsuit. She says e-poll books containing voter registration information were problematic and there were long lines and a record number of voters in the county.
Recorder’s spokeswoman Elizabeth Bartholomew says county lawyers were in court arguing against the request at about 5:30 p.m. She says state law requires a 7 p.m. closing and anyone already in line will be allowed to vote without court intervention.
4:33 p.m. PST -- Pro-Trump message broadcast by deputy in car
A Multnomah County Sheriff’s Office corrections deputy is facing an internal investigation after allegedly broadcasting pro-Donald Trump sentiments from a department vehicle while driving past voters.
The Oregonian/OregonLive quotes a witness as saying 25 to 30 people were standing in line in downtown Portland to leave off their ballots on Tuesday when a sheriff’s office car went by and the words “Vote Trump” came out of the car megaphone.
A spokesman for the sheriff’s office, Lt. Chad Gaidos, said a corrections deputy is facing an internal investigation because of the alleged incident. He did not identify the corrections deputy.
5:47 p.m. CST -- Long lines at some Mississippi precincts
Mississippi voters have been standing in long lines in parts of the state to cast ballots for president.
People waited more than half an hour in several places, including Oxford and Madison.
Secretary of State Delbert Hosemann says any problems with voting were “minimal, isolated and quickly rectified.”
Polls remain open until 7 p.m.
Hosemann says people still in line at closing time are allowed to wait and vote.
In addition to the presidential race, all four U.S. House races and some races for Mississippi Supreme Court and state Court of Appeals are on the ballot.
Mississippi is awarding six electoral votes for president.
5:36 p.m. CST -- No charges to be filed in 2 double-voting cases
A prosecutor in Des Moines says no charges will be filed against two residents who were suspected of trying to vote twice.
Polk County Attorney John Sarcone said Tuesday that authorities have determined that there’s “no basis to go forward” due to lack of criminal intent. He says age and confusion were factors in the cases.
Elections officials had referred three cases of attempted double-voting to police for investigation last month, during early voting.
Sarcone’s office has filed a felony election misconduct charge against 55-year-old Terri Rote, who told Iowa Public Radio that she voted twice for Donald Trump because she believed the election is rigged. Rote is scheduled to be arraigned next month.
Secretary of State Paul Pate’s spokesman says the state isn’t aware of any other double-voting allegations.
4:14 p.m. MST -- Judge to consider Idaho polling place lawsuit
In its federal lawsuit against Ada County and Idaho state election officials, the Idaho Democratic Party contends that the Ada County Clerk’s office didn’t give enough notice to voters that five polling places had changed.
The locations were changed roughly two and a half months after Assistant U.S. Attorney Christine Gealy England notified Ada County officials that several poll locations didn’t meet required standards under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act, according to the lawsuit.
The Idaho Democratic Party contends that while some of the locations were changed to accommodate the federal law, others were changed simply for “space issues.” The Democrats said those issues should have been anticipated sooner or addressed in a way that didn’t require a new location.
Ada County officials, however, have said they gave routine notification about the changed polling places -- including ads in the local newspaper -- as required by Idaho law. Notices of the change were also mailed to people in those precincts, according to Ada County officials.
A federal judge was expected to hold a hearing on the matter late Tuesday afternoon.
4:11 p.m. MST -- Voting machines in southern Utah county back up and running, officials say
Election officials say voting machines in a southern Utah county are back up and running after the memory cards were mistakenly wiped during programming.
Washington County Clerk Auditor Kim Hafen says some machines were down for hours, but they were all fixed by noon.
Hafen says a worker meant to copy and paste information as the cards were programmed in batches ahead of Election Day, but deleted the data instead.
He says about 75 percent of the machines there wouldn’t turn on when polls opened Tuesday morning.
Election workers used paper ballots as the cards were re-programmed. Machines started going back online about an hour and a half after polls opened and all of the county’s approximately 400 machines were fixed by about noon.
5:05 p.m. CST -- Fire alarm sounds at S.D. polling place, leading to delay
There will be a 15-minute delay in reporting results from South Dakota after one polling place had to close for that amount of time Tuesday when a fire alarm sounded.
The alarm sounded at South Middle School in Rapid City.
Secretary of State Shantel Krebs says that poll workers moved voters outside for exactly 15 minutes, so that location will remain open an extra 15 minutes.
All vote results for the state will be held until all the polls close -- tonight, that’ll be at 8:15 p.m., Central time. The affected location is in the Mountain time zone.
Julie Pearson is the Pennington County auditor. She says workers protected the vote and grabbed the ballots in the box and the master registration list as they ushered voters outside.
Pearson said workers were told that a student pulled the fire alarm. The Rapid City Fire Department tweeted that the alarm was reset as quickly as possible to allow voting to resume.
5:03 p.m. CST -- Last minute moves leave Voters confused at several Houston polling sites, advocates say
Voting rights advocates say five Houston polling sites were affected by last-minute moves Tuesday that left many voters confused.
Spokesman Zenen Perez of the Texas Civil Rights Project says most of the changes were in predominantly black areas of the nation’s fourth-largest city. Perez says voters in some cases were informed by hand-written signs posted on walls and trees.
Harris County elections spokesman Hector DeLeon said he had no information on the matter.
Anthony Gutierrez, executive director of the Texas chapter of Common Cause, says some people had to go to three different locations before they could vote.
Other complaints among about 1,400 calls received from Texas on an Election Day hotline set up by nonprofits included scattered reports of voting technology malfunctions and lines longer than an hour in parts of Houston and Dallas.
Gutierrez says many people complained of poll workers being misinformed about changes the state made after a federal court ruled Texas’ voter ID law unconstitutional.
6:01 p.m. EST -- Detroit voting machines stopped working, clerk says
City Clerk Janice Winfrey says some voting machines in Detroit stopped working Tuesday morning and had to be replaced.
The delay caused long lines and waits of an hour or more to vote.
Winfrey says her office received about 50 calls for broken voting machines, but some were repeat calls for the same machines she describes as a decade old.
Northwest of Detroit, a malfunctioning computer and tabulator at a voting precinct in Waterford Township forced elections workers to put about 50 ballots into a bin.
Township Clerk Sue Camilleri says the computer and tabulator were fixed. She says the ballots that were set aside “will not be put through the tabulator until the end of the night.”
5:58 p.m. EST -- Kentucky election fraud hotline receives dozens of calls
The Kentucky attorney general’s office says its election fraud hotline has received 155 calls from 46 counties at last count.
The total was as of 3:30 p.m. EST Tuesday, some 3 ½ hours before polls were to close in the western half of the state. Voters are choosing a U.S. senator, congressmen, president and state legislative races.
The attorney general’s office said issues reported to the hotline include poll disruption, general election fraud, electioneering, residency, procedural and legal questions, voter assistance, voting machine, voter identification and election officials.
5:57 p.m. EST -- Voter ID complaint in N.J.
A civil liberties group says it has received a complaint that signs asking people to have identifications ready to vote were posted in at least one polling place in New Jersey.
The American Civil Liberties Union’s New Jersey chapter told NJ.com that it received a complaint about the Voter ID sign at a polling place in Metuchen.
Most voters in New Jersey are not required to show identification to vote.
Middlesex County elections officials say the issue was resolved as soon as they were told about the sign.
Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer said Tuesday that she was also asked for her ID by a worker who was looking up her information. Zimmer refused to show her ID.
5:55 p.m. EST -- “Isolated issues” at Virginia polls, election commissioner says
The head of Virginia’s Department of Elections says complaints about problems at the polls have so far not been any greater than in previous years.
Department of Elections Commissioner Edgardo Cortes said at a news conference Tuesday evening that among the “isolated issues” were long lines in Richmond, Chesapeake, Prince William, Spotsylvania and Staunton. He says elections officials are monitoring the lines and reminds voters that anyone in line by the time polls close at 7 p.m. will be able to vote.
Cortes says several precincts in northern Virginia’s Fairfax County didn’t properly load their electronic poll book data, so some people who likely were registered weren’t showing up. He says those people were given provisional ballots and the elections office will work quickly to process them.
He says the department also got complaints from some voters who had registered at Department of Motor Vehicle offices but weren’t on the rolls. Cortes says that happens every election and an audit process is in place to confirm who registered and process their provisional ballots.
5:53 p.m. EST -- Disorderly conduct reported at Delaware voting location
Delaware state troopers were called to a voting location in Elsmere in response to a complaint of disorderly conduct involving a couple of supporters of Donald Trump, but no arrests were made.
State police spokesman Cpl. Jeffrey Hale says troopers spoke to the men, advised them that they shouldn’t talk to voters as they were coming in to Baltz Elementary School to vote, and that they needed to stay at least 50 feet away from the polling location, as required by state law.
State elections commissioner Elaine Manlove said a woman called her about the “scary white men.” Manlove says she didn’t know about the nature of the complaint, but that the men did not appear to be doing anything wrong. Manlove said her office did not notify police.
4:44 p.m. CST -- Fire alarm goes off at Wisconsin polling place
The City of Madison, Wisconsin clerk, said on Twitter that due to a fire alarm that closed a polling place for a short time, the polling place at East High will be open until 9 p.m. per a court order.
3:42 p.m. MST -- Colorado voter registration system back up
The Colorado Secretary of State said in a tweet that the voter registration system went down for 29 minutes, but is back up now. He said they are investigating.
5:35 p.m. EST -- Advocacy groups suing to extend voting hours in Durham County
Advocacy groups say they’re suing to extend voting hours in Durham County by 90 minutes because of computer problems that resulted in a paper check-in process.
The Southern Coalition for Social Justice said in a news release that it filed a lawsuit on behalf of Democracy North Carolina requesting an emergency action from Wake County Superior Court. The groups want the court to order the State Board of Elections to keep Durham County polls open.
Wake County Superior Court Judge Don Stephens is expected to preside over the emergency hearing.
Meanwhile, the Durham County Board of Elections has asked state board to extend voting hours at one precinct, the Bethesda Ruritan Club. It also is gathering information for the state board about whether hours at other locations should be extended. The county board will then determine whether to request extended hours at any other polling location.
The computer problem resulted in at least one precinct running out of authorization-to-vote forms for about 90 minutes.
3:29 p.m. MST -- Colorado voter registration system goes down
The Colorado Secretary of State’s voter registration system in some parts of the state went down during midday voting Tuesday, forcing in-person voters to cast provisional ballots. Lynn Bartels, a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State’s Office, tweeted that some county clerks were unable to process mail ballots that need to have the signature verified.
It’s unclear when the system will become accessible. The cause of the failure also was unclear.
4:48 p.m. EST -- Long lines, broken machines in Massachusetts
Civil rights groups reported long lines, broken voting machines and other common Election Day issues at polling locations across Massachusetts Tuesday afternoon, but said election officials appear to be promptly responding to them as they come up.
Meryl Kessler, executive director of the League of Women Voters of Massachusetts, said there were reports of “excessively long lines” at polling locations in Boston and that broken voting machines were reported in Boston, Springfield, Lawrence, New Bedford and Chelsea.
Rahsaan Hall, of the American Civil Liberties Union, said there have also been isolated complaints of translation services not being provided and poor access to polling locations for disabled residents.
3:23 p.m. CST -- Computer malfunctions at Texas polling place
In Texas, a computer used by election clerks malfunctioned at a polling place inside a high school in suburban Houston, forcing officials to briefly divert voters to another polling place more than two miles away. Fort Bend County Elections Administrator John Oldham said the malfunctioning console was later replaced with a backup and voting resumed.
Andrea Patience, a 50-year-old pharmacy technician, was among those standing in line when the computer malfunctioned. She said she waited an hour for it to be fixed. Patience said as many as 100 people were standing in line at the time, and about half of them left.
“There were a lot of upset people,” Patience said. “I don’t know if they will come back later or decide not to vote.”
2:20 p.m. MST -- Utah voting machine problems
Election officials in Utah said voting machine problems in the southern part of the state forced poll workers early in the day to use paper ballots.
1:15 p.m. EST -- Two poll watchers fired from South Florida precinct
Two South Florida poll watchers were fired Tuesday from a Pompano Beach voting precinct, CBS Miami reported.
According to Tonya Edwards from the Broward Department of Elections, the two poll watchers were asked to leave the Herb Skolnick Center in Pompano Beach, for “not adhering to policy/training.” They were let go by an election official who was on site and replaced by two new workers.
Edwards told CBS Miami the workers were asked to leave for interfering with the voting process.
Voting was not interrupted during the incident.
No other incidents have been reported at any South Florida voting precincts.
12:20 p.m. CST -- Dead judge leads to voting delays in Dallas County
Some voters in Dallas County, Texas, faced long delays early Tuesday after a judge failed to show up on time. As it turned out, that judge had died in his home during the night, CBS Dallas-Fort Worth reported.
This strange turn of events took place at the Betty Warmack Library in Grand Prairie. Without the judge, election officials could not open the polling location, leaving voters to stand outside in rainy conditions.
An alternative judge was called to the library. Once he reported to the scene, voting was able to begin. That was not until some two hours after the scheduled 7 a.m. start time.
The Elections Department and Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins requested an extension of the voting hours at the Betty Warmack Library as a result of the delay, “to ensure that all voters have the same opportunity to cast their ballot,” explained Jenkins.
Hours have been extended until 9 p.m. for the Warmack Library voting location. Ballots cast after 7 p.m. are provisional pending further review of statute and judicial authority, according to Dallas County Judge Clay Jenkins.
12:15 p.m. EST -- Some Trump voters in Pennsylvania reporting ballots switched to Clinton
Election judges in Clinton Township, Butler County in Pennsylvania confirmed there were issues with two of their eight automated voting machines. Most of the issues came when people tried to vote straight party ticket.
However, in some instances people said they attempted to vote for Republican Donald Trump only to see their vote switched before their eyes to Democrat Hillary Clinton, CBS Pittsburgh reported.
“I went back, pressed Trump again. Three times I did this, so then I called one of the women that were working the polls over. And she said you must be doing it wrong. She did it three times and it defaulted to Hillary every time,” voter Bobbie Lee Hawranko told the station.
“If somebody has an issue, they should certainly let the judge of elections at the precinct know and also call their county bureau of elections as folks have done here this morning,” said State Rep. Daryl Metcalfe, a Republican. “Those machines should be taken out of the mix and they shouldn’t be using those machines.”
Officials tell CBS News they have recalibrated the machines and are confident that the problem has been resolved. A Butler County commissioner said to her knowledge no one has confirmed a vote for a candidate that they did not intend to vote for.
12:15 p.m. EST -- Pennsylvania judge fails to show up to polling center
Allegheny County has been dealing with some Election Day delays, CBS Pittsburgh reported.
A judge of elections did not show up when the polls opened Tuesday morning in Springdale Borough.
When Margaret Vernon showed up, more than three hours after the polls opened, sheriff’s deputies escorted her into the facility. She will be charged by summons with failure to perform duties.
Vernon told deputies she was ill.
11:45 a.m. EST -- North Carolina precinct runs out of “Intent to Vote” forms
In Durham, precinct 31 ran out of “Intent to Vote” forms, the Durham Board of Elections confirmed, CBS affiliate WNCN reported. Normally the forms would be printed out. Since computers were down, they had been handing out physical forms. They then ran out of the physical forms.
By 1 p.m. EST, the “Intent to Vote” forms were restocked, the Durham Board of Elections confirmed.
11:36 a.m. EST -- Voting glitch reported in Durham, North Carolina
A glitch caused minor issues at several Durham precincts during the first hour of voting Tuesday morning, the North Carolina State Board of Election officials said.
The glitch only impacted the electronic poll book used in the check-in process for voters and didn’t have anything to do with ballots or the process of voting, CBS affiliate WNCN reported.
Twenty-three other counties use a similar electronic poll book and all have back-up printed poll books they can resort to.
