Do you have a Report of Problems on Pennsylvania's Primary Day?

The Bucks County Courier Times ran a lead editorial about problems in Bucks County. The editorial is enclosed below.

Examples of what to report:

long lines,

polling place change

not finding your new polling place,

workers wearing campaign buttons inside the polling room (where machines are),

number of voters signed in not maching machine counts,

any violation of privacy with absentee vote counting,

machine problems, (skipping votes, not registered votes, other malfunctions)

polling place not open on time

machines breaking down

being registered with a Party and being told you were nonaffiliated,

not being listed in pollbook,

duplicate names in the polling book (as with two voters listed in duplicate in our precinct)

Were your problems dealt with promptly and to your satisfaction?

Editorial, Bucks County Courier Times, April 24, 2008

http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/321-04242008-1524074.html

Confusion at the polls

Bucks County election officials had a ton of extra work leading up to Tuesday's primary. The hard-fought battle for the Democratic presidential nomination has excited the nation and drawn many new voters into the political process. What's more, scores of Republicans switched parties so they could vote in the Democratic primary, creating even more work. Consider that Democrats out-registered Republicans in Bucks County for the first time in decades. And 62 percent of registered Democrats voted.

Clearly, folks at the Board of Elections were busy. Still, there's no excuse for the kind of slip-ups and confusion that plagued some voters Tuesday. Too many people were not notified of polling place changes. And too many poll workers were not equipped with updated or accurate information, resulting in voters getting sent to several locations in a frustrating search for the right polling place. "I had to go to three different places before I got to vote," said Levittown resident Russell Long. "No one knew where I was supposed to be. It was just ridiculous."

Sure was.

Look, we know county election officials didn't intentionally make a mess of things - but make a mess they did. But you'd never know it from the reaction of Deena Dean, director of the Board of Elections.

Dean said she wasn't aware of any significant problems and was adamant that all voters had been properly notified of polling place changes. Nobody was missed, she insisted.

The dozens of phone calls we received at the newspaper as well as the confusion our reporters observed at the polls tell a much different story. It's a story county officials need to get to the bottom of before November when turnout could hit a record high. Unlike the primary, which gave Republicans little reason to vote, the general election will give members of both parties plenty of reason to go to the polls - if they can find them.