March 4th "Texas-Ohio Two-Step"
During the primaries in Ohio, Texas, Vermont, and Rhode Island on March 4, 2008, Election Protection received over 1000 calls to the 1-866-OUR-VOTE Election Protection Hotline, and had over 200 legal volunteers answering phone lines, monitoring polling sites, and stationed at the offices of county election officials from 6am until the polls closed.
In Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Election Protection mobile legal volunteers worked closely with poll workers to solve problems because the county board of elections’ hotline was jammed all day. Election Protection was able to quickly contact volunteers directly at the board’s offices and fix problems in minutes rather than hours, protecting the right to vote for countless Ohioans. In Texas, Election Protection volunteers worked overtime when the complex Democratic Party primary/precinct convention rules confused and disenfranchised voters across the state.
Ohio
Poll workers across Cuyahoga County were confused about whether or not to remove a stub on paper ballots. At multiple precincts, poll workers were asking Election Protection volunteers whether or not they were supposed to remove the stub. Working with election officials, Election Protection was able to help to disseminate the proper information to poll workers and ensure that those ballots counted.
- Across the state, voters and poll workers reported problems with voting machines, including:
- Jammed access cards;
- Disability access machines not working, in some cases, for a significant amount of time in the morning; and
- Poll workers who did not know how to operate certain machines.
- Lack of privacy at polling places in Cuyahoga County - polling places lacking a sufficient number of privacy screens - infringed upon Ohioans’ right to cast a secret ballot.
- Numerous voters - including some who have been voting at the same polling place for years - reported that their names were dropped from the rolls or were misspelled on the poll books.
- In Cuyahoga County, when one precinct at the Orchard Elementary School ran out of Democratic paper ballots, poll workers began handing out ballots for another precinct within the polling location despite the fact one precinct was for Congressional District 10 and the other precinct was for Congressional District 11. Election Protection was able to quickly notify the Board of Elections, but it is unclear how many voters cast incorrect ballots.
- Callers reported excessively long lines across the state. Causes included:
- Uneven allocation of voting booths within polling places with multiple precincts;
- Precincts using paper ballots with few or no pens for voters to mark ballots; and
- An insufficient number of poll workers.
- In Franklin County, Election Protection received multiple reports of poll workers entering the non-partisan (independent) code into touch screen machines for voters registered with a party.
- One voter reported that she notified the poll worker of the problem when she saw she could only vote for issues. When she asked for help, the poll worker told her to press "submit," thereby disqualifying her from getting the correct ballot.
- Another voter reported the poll worker was unable to cancel the process, leaving the voter with only the opportunity to vote on the ballot as is or not at all. Election Protection told the voter she would in fact be able to re-cast her vote on a partisan ballot.
- Students at two Ohio colleges reported problems of intimidation at the polls.
- At Oberlin College in Lorrain County, students reported that a poll worker was having students recite their address and also challenging many of them regarding their addresses.
- A student at Ohio State University overheard poll workers incorrectly saying that if the address on a student’s driver’s license does not match the address on their voter registration they will have to vote a provisional ballot.
- During early voting in Cuyahoga County, a concerned caller reported to the Hotline that voters were not being permitted to park temporarily at a free parking lot behind the Cuyahoga County Board of Elections and were instead directed to pay for parking at lots costing $4.00-$10.00. One woman, who could not pay for parking, was in tears because she was unable to vote. Election Protection’s coalition partners on the ground contacted the Cuyahoga Board of Elections. In response, the Board issued a new rule that they were clearing the employee lot to allow any voter free parking for the remainder of the early voting period. The Board also delivered an absentee ballot to her house of the elderly woman who was turned away the following day.
Texas
- Election Protection volunteers worked overtime when the complex Democratic Party primary/precinct convention rules confused and disenfranchised voters across the state. Precinct convention issues included:
- Failure to follow caucusing rules or calculate delegates properly;
- Sites inappropriate or "barely conducive" to the process (i.e. very hot pool area or auditorium bleachers);
- Multiple reports of "pandemonium" before the caucus began at the Routh Roach Elementary polling place in suburban Dallas; and
- Reports across the state of mass confusion at caucus locations - people in charge giving conflicting directions, no paper on which to vote, no place to indicate who one was supporting.
Click here for more on Democratic Party primary/precinct convention issues.
A school in Dallas County refused to give students an excused absence to participate in precinct conventions- Multiple callers reported that businesses, in violation of federal law, would not give workers paid leave to vote.
- A volunteer for a sheriff candidate entered a polling place and started telling people that if they were voting Republican they could go down the street and vote at another school.
- Election Protection volunteers helped many callers across the state who didn’t appear on the rolls at their polling place - including multiple callers who had registered at the Department of Motor Vehicles.
- Callers reported excessively long lines across the state due to increased turnout, disorganized and poorly trained poll workers, and a lack of resources.
- A polling place in Denton County was directing disabled voters to the back of the building where there was no assistance for them to go up the stairs to the voting area.