Thousands of calls about broken voting machines, hours-long lines and confusion at polling places poured into a hotline set up by a coalition of civil rights and legal aid groups Tuesday, with voters at more than 100 polling sites across the country phoning in problems on Election Day.
In Gwinnett County, Ga., voters said there were snaking lines after four machines malfunctioned early in the day and left them to submit provisional ballots. In Chicago, elections officials asked a judge to extend voting hours at five locations after precincts opened late and voters said ballot pages were missing. In parts of the Deep South, storms led to blackouts, including one in Knox County, Tenn., that left several polling places without electricity, forcing them to resort to paper ballots.
The nonpartisan Election Protection Hotline received more than 17,000 calls by early afternoon, according to the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which operates the line. Many of the problems seemed to be a result of precincts overwhelmed with unusually large numbers of voters or aging technology. But complaints also came in about how voter identification laws were being applied in several states, said Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers' Committee.
Across the country, the Department of Justice and nonprofits had dispatched voting observers to ensure smooth elections. The Election Protection Coalition, a network of civil rights groups, had 6,500 volunteers in 30 states to watch for problems at the polls.
Civil rights groups said calls came in about voting machines flipping votes in Illinois, North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Texas, though they said the events did not seem to be widespread.
"We also see problems with poorly trained poll workers.... In Charlotte, N.C., I know early this morning when people checked in they were asked which party they were with," said Karen Hobert Flynn, president of Common Cause, a member of the Election Protection Coalition. She noted the question is more typical of a primary election.
"This is something we did correct with poll workers at the time," Flynn said, adding that her group "broke all records" for volunteers this year because of a surge in voters for the midterm election.
And despite President Donald Trump's warning this week that there are "a lot of people _ my opinion, and based on proof _ that try and get in illegally and actually vote illegally," elections officials did not report any widespread voter fraud.
"No. None," said Rick Barron, the elections director in Fulton County, Ga., when asked of any reports of fraud. The county includes most of Atlanta. But Barron said there were other voting snags, including at a recreation center south of downtown that received fewer than half the number of voting machines it was supposed to get. That led to unusually long lines in the morning before the problem was resolved.
Lacey Johnson, a Houston resident who attempted to vote in the morning at her polling place, said a mistake by poll workers left her temporarily unable to cast a regular ballot when they accidentally scanned her in the electronic voting system as having voted before she actually did.
"They tried to re-enter my information, but because they had already entered it moments before, it now falsely claimed I had already voted," she wrote in a Facebook post.
In an interview, Johnson, a supporter of Democratic Senate candidate Beto O'Rourke, said she voted via a provisional ballot but felt her vote was "suppressed" since it was unclear if it would be counted. Hours later, she returned to the polling site with an elections board official on the phone who was able to help poll workers generate a new code for her to vote.
In another incident in Houston, an elections official was dismissed after reportedly making a racist comment to a black voter in which she suggested the voter would understand voting rules better if the official had worn "blackface."
Questions about voter suppression had made headlines in several states before Election Day, including in Georgia, where civil rights groups sued to keep tens of thousands of mostly blacks from having their votes restricted because the names on their IDs did not precisely match voting rolls, including middle names and hyphens.
On Tuesday, a group of voters represented by the nonprofit Protect Democracy filed a federal lawsuit asking for Republican gubernatorial candidate Brian Kemp, who is Georgia's secretary of state, to be restricted from overseeing the election. Opponents say it is a conflict of interest for Kemp to administer an election in which he is a candidate.
In North Dakota, Native American tribal leaders had rushed to print thousands of new IDs to comply with a new voter ID law that requires voters to have IDs with residential addresses, something many there do not have. Many instead use post office boxes because they live on reservations without traditional addresses.
The state's election's director Tuesday said that the ID issue was not widespread, though civil rights groups said they received reports of Native Americans who encountered difficulties voting.
In predominantly Latino Dodge City, Kan., civil rights groups said fears over voter suppression may have been misplaced. Groups had warned about voter turnout in the city after county officials moved its only polling station to a new location a few miles outside of town, more than a mile beyond the city's last bus stop.
Liberal observers feared that the move would depress turnout among working-class Latino voters, who typically favor Democrats, and volunteers rushed to the city from across the state and the nation _ one from as far away as San Diego _ to provide carpools and buses to voters. Instead, the vehicles mostly stayed idle as voters needing rides didn't show up in big numbers.
American Civil Liberties Union observers reported that only 10 or 15 voters mistakenly showed up at the old voting location, and voters overwhelmingly drove to the new polling station.
"The national story doesn't really appear to be the real story on the ground," said Edgar Pando, a Dodge City attorney who provides legal aid to low- and middle-income Kansans. "People sort of extrapolated a meaning that wasn't there, outside looking in, and that seems to be the general consensus."
