Chicago (IL) – Barack Obama’s landslide win against John McCain as well as a heavy voter turnout dominate the headlines, but it is clear that once again there were critical problems with the voting technology and infrastructure at polling locations, which appeared to be overwhelmed yesterday. In states that are crucial to the election such as Ohio, Florida and Virginia, the Election Day proved to be full of thousands of complaints about long waits, malfunctioning voting machines and even missing ballots.

The majority of the troubled areas were identified prior to voting by the Election Protection Coalition, a group responsible for monitoring and protecting the rights of individuals. The coalition had reports of over 41,000 calls to their Our Vote hotline, which included 1400 calls from Florida and over 1000 from Ohio by the middle of the day.

"We certainly don't want to be Chicken Little here. We're trying to report what we're seeing out in the field. But this is what we expected to happen," Jonah Goldman, director of the National Campaign for Fair Elections, told the LA Times in regards to  the problems that they were made aware of in previous elections or early voting. "The infrastructure of our election isn't really equipped to handle this kind of turnout."

Individuals voting in Florida, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Virginia experienced waits that sometime exceeded two to three hours. There were major issues with electronic voting machines breaking down, and optical scanners were being reported jammed all over Florida.

"Ballots are being set aside to be run through the scanners at the end of the day, which doesn't allow the voter to verify that the ballot was marked as intended," said Derek Cressman of Common Cause. "We've seen dozens of reports of this all across South Florida. It doesn't appear to be an isolated issue."

Broward County Florida had an issue with misprinted ballots. Individuals working at the polls in Tallahassee, Tampa, Miami and Palm Beach claimed to have issues getting in touch with the state supervisor of elections in an attempt to verify voter eligibility for individuals whose names were among the 10,000 that were still in the process of being contested under the “no match, no vote” law that was adopted last year in Florida.

Its unclear why states that knew there was a chance that they would experience turnout related issues did not do more to avoid the possibility of a shortage of voting machines, poll workers, and ballots.

"Sometimes, election officials wait until there's a meltdown. Florida has made some improvements since 2000, and Ohio has made some improvements since 2004. Sometimes you need to have the finger pointed at you," Jon Greenbaum, director of the Voting Rights Project for the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law told the New York Times.

In 2004, Columbus, Ohio saw major issues, however this year there were only a few complaints. Philadelphia saw more than just machine problems: Individuals monitoring the election all over Pennsylvania were reporting that around noon, Penn State University students and even in other locations were being told they had no choice but to vote on provisional ballots.
 
Groups that aim to protect the rights of voters claim that the main fear with the provisional ballot is that an individual’s vote might not count because the ballots are sometimes not tabulated until days following the election.

Reports were made that in some areas there were police officers placed outside of polling locations, which advocates of voters rights claim can intimidate voters- this has also been deemed a tactic for the scaring of minority voters.

Mike Litterst, a spokesman for the Virginia Board of Elections claimed that the problems within Virginia’s borders were isolated to a limited number of precincts, so he had a feeling that there would not be any emergency measures taken by the state.

Individuals keeping a close eye on the happenings at polling location had high hopes that early voting would prevent major issues and voting discrepancies that occurred 4 years ago. Some estimates stated that almost 30% of the ballots cast in the presidential election this year were cast prior to today.

Early voting in both North Carolina and West Virginia brought to light major issues with electronic voting machines that were flipping votes for absolutely no reason. Election officials claimed that these results were due to improperly calibrated machines.
 
Problems seemed to be even worse in the Rocky Mountain States and also on the West Coast. Denver residents, who saw long lines in the midterm elections in 2006, casted their ballots on paper for the first time in over ten years. "We need comprehensive voting reform so that these mistakes do not continue and so that every eligible voter can register and cast a ballot that will be counted," Goldman said.