With every election, and especially the close ones, come the accusations that the other side cheated. It’s no different this year, with poll-watchers and election lawyers out in full force, all claiming to be doing George Washington’s work to keep the electorate true. Especially in crucial swing states like Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia, the finger-pointing started before the first votes were counted, from worries about faulty machines to claims of voter suppression. Below, a partial and continuously updated list of reported irregularities.
-Tracking urban areas in Pennsylvania, Mother Jones reports that the Election Protection Coalition hotline has “fielded at least five reports, each describing dozens of voters being turned away from their polling places because they were not registered as of this afternoon.” According to Barbara Arnwine, the head of the Lawyer’s Committee for Civil Rights, there are “too many voters being affected by this for us to think it’s voter error or voter confusion.”
-In Virginia, according to The Nation, “Democrats are worried that long lines at polling places in key Virginia counties may discourage voters and cause them to go home without voting … In response, the state Democratic Party sent a letter at 3:30 pm to the Virginia state board of elections requesting that voters be allowed to vote by paper ballot.”
-This morning, 12,525 voters in Florida “got an unexpected — and incorrect — call from the Pinellas Supervisor of Elections Office Tuesday morning saying they had an extra day to turn in their mail-in, absentee ballot.”
-Buzzfeed reports that Democrats in Ohio are worried about poor voters being pressured into using alternative ballots that won’t be tallied for eleven days, while the Ohio Secretary of State’s office insists, “We’ve not heard of any issues and we won’t have numbers on how many provisionals have been cast until much later this evening.”
-“There is just a word — just one word — to describe the situation around New Jersey, and that is catastrophe,” said the aforementioned Barbara Arnwine of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who also cited “a smattering of different things” in California and “unpleasant interactions” with the tea party group True the Vote, according to the Los Angeles Times.
-Mitt Romney spokesperson Ryan Williams was not pleased with one Philadelphia precinct’s choice of decoration:
