OPEN THE POD BAY DOORS, HAL!
The AP says voting machines "began wreaking havoc the minute the polls opened" today, slowing the voting in Ohio and Indiana and forcing some Florida precincts to give up on the machines in favor of paper ballots.
In Delaware County, Ind., the AP says officials will ask the courts to extend voting tonight because a computer error has already prevented voters from voting in 75 precincts. A local election official tells AP that the cards that were supposed to have activated the machines weren't programmed properly.
I Said Vote, BITCH!!
A poll worker in Louisville Kentucky was arrested Tuesday and charged with assault and interfering with an election for allegedly choking a voter and pushing the voter out the door, an official said.
Election officials called police, and the voter wanted to file charges, said Paula McCraney, a spokeswoman for the Jefferson County Clerk.
"That about tops off the day," McCraney said.
Vandalism
Republicans and Democrats in New Jersey and Colorado, respectively, are out with claims that the other side has engaged in acts of political vandalism.
In New Jersey, the campaign manager for U.S. Senate candidate Tom Kean Jr. says that vandals "struck the Kean for Senate Headquarters and an auxiliary office of [New Jersey's] Star-Ledger by chaining closed the main entrance to the building as well as breaking off keys in the side door entrances."
In Colorado, meanwhile, the campaign for Democratic congressional candidate Jay Fawcett says staffers arrived at work this morning to discover that their offices had been sprayed with some kind of "vile skunk aroma" that made them virtually uninhabitable. The campaign says a car belonging to Fawcett's finance director was sprayed with a similar substance last week -- and that Fawcett himself was the target of an e-mailed death threat last night.
HA! Psych!!
The FBI is reportedly investigating allegations that Republicans in Virginia -- where the race between George Allen and Jim Webb could determine control of the U.S. Senate -- are using misleading telephone calls in an effort to suppress the Democratic vote. Some Virginia Democrats have reported receiving calls telling them -- falsely -- that their polling places have been moved; one says he got a call in which he was told -- again, falsely -- that he wasn't registered in the Commonwealth and could be arrested if he tried to vote there.
Robo-Call
A prerecorded voice tells voters that they're about to receive important information about a Democratic candidate. If the voter stays on the line, he or she hears negative information about the Democrat. If the voter hangs up, a computer dialer redials the same number repeatedly, misleading voters into thinking that they're being besieged by calls by a Democratic candidate.
Comments