A request for an extension of voting hours in District precincts that experienced glitches with new touch-screen voting machines will be made late in the afternoon by the campaign of D.C. Council Chairman Vincent C. Gray, the leading challenger to Mayor Adrian M. Fenty.
Campaign spokesman Traci Hughes said they have received complaints at “a rapid pace,” and attorneys have needed time to evaluate them. A letter requesting the Board of Elections and Ethics keep the polls open a little longer in some precincts should be sent “within the hour,” she said at about 3 p.m.
Reports of voting problems emerged shortly after polls opened at 7 a.m. Some precincts delayed opening until technicians could arrive to get the touch-screen machines functioning properly. Most of the problems appear to have been ironed out within an hour or less.
Rokey W. Suleman II, executive director of the elections board, said that the “hiccups” were “typical of what happens when jurisdictions put out new voting equipment. Under a mandate from the D.C. Council, the elections board replaced its electronic touch-screen and optical-scan paper ballot machines this year and has had to rush to train about 1,800 poll workers.
The board has confirmed late openings at two polling sites: Precinct 151, the Harris School in Ward 7′s Marshall Heights neighborhood, and Precinct 82, at Sherwood Recreation Center, just south of H Street NE in Ward 6. A Washington Post reporter also reported that polls opened about 15 minutes late at Precinct 113, at the Ward 7 Senior Wellness Center.
The problem at the first two precincts, Suleman said, was “poll workers following procedures to a T.” He said they were guided by instruction manuals showing that there should have been three-wire seals on the paper-ballot scanning machines instead of the two that actually were affixed. And then, poll workers mistakenly chose not to open the polls rather than allow voters to cast paper ballots and store them securely while the seal issue was addressed, he said.
“The great majority of problems are part of people being unfamiliar with the process,” Suleman said, adding that “the vast majority of precincts went off without a hitch.” Any machine-related issues, he said, have now been settled.
In order to grant the Gray campaign’s request, the board’s two members, Togo D. West Jr. and Charles R. Lowery Jr., would have to convene.
Concerns over the voting hardware added another note of drama to the mayoral campaign, which in many precincts has been marked by low voter turnout. In Maryland, turnout also is reported to be exceptionally low in many precincts, though a few have experienced a steady flow of voters.
At Wesley Methodist Church on Connecticut Avenue NW in the Chevy Chase section of the District, only 333 people had voted as of 12:30 p.m.
Poll workers said the turnout was unusually low in a neighborhood that usually is politically active. But the polling place is just a few blocks from the Chevy Chase community center, which was one of the five locations the District had set aside for two weeks of early voting, and turnout there had been the greatest in the city.
Still, campaign officials from both the Fenty and Gray camps predicted a very low citywide turnout, perhaps under 100,000, which both sides attributed to the negative tone of the campaign.
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