Long lines and machine breakdowns: voting on polling day



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ATLANTA (AP) – Des problèmes ont surgi au cours des semaines précédant le vote anticipé, certains électeurs de tout le pays étant confrontés à des files d'attente de plusieurs heures, des équipements de vote défectueux et des bureaux de vote fermés de manière inattendue.

Certaines des plus grandes recrues se trouvaient en Géorgie, où la course du gouverneur comptait parmi les compétitions de mi-mandat les plus regardées du pays et suscitait une forte participation.


Un électeur du comté de Gwinnett, Ontaria Woods, a attendu plus de trois heures et a déclaré avoir vu environ deux douzaines de personnes venues voter, à cause des lignes.

"Nous essayons de leur dire d'attendre, mais les gens ont des enfants. Les gens ont faim. Les gens sont fatigués", a déclaré Woods.

Le groupe gouvernemental Common Cause Common a blâmé le taux de participation élevé associé à un trop petit nombre de machines à voter, de bulletins de vote et de travailleurs.


Le directeur des élections du comté de Fulton, Richard Barron, a reconnu que certains bureaux de vote avaient des lignes d’électeurs, mais a expliqué que cela était dû à la longueur des bulletins de vote et aux machines à voter retirées du fait d’un procès en cours.



Alors que le vote s'est déroulé sans encombre dans de nombreuses communautés, les électeurs de New York à Arizona ont dû faire face à de longues files d'attente et à des équipements défectueux.

Dans toute la ville de New York, des scanneurs de bulletins de vote cassés ont été rapportés dans plusieurs bureaux de vote. Le taux de participation était si élevé dans l'un des quartiers les plus peuplés de l'Upper West Side de Manhattan que la file d'attente pour numériser les bulletins de vote s'étendait autour d'un gymnase d'école secondaire. Les agents électoraux ont dit aux électeurs que deux des environ une demi-douzaine de scanneurs fonctionnaient mal et que des réparations étaient en cours.

Voters arriving at two separate polling stations discovered that most scanners had broken down, forcing some people to drop their ballots in "emergency ballot boxes" or vote using an affidavit ballot.

"There are broken scanners everywhere in Brooklyn," Stefan Ringel, spokesman for Brooklyn Borough President Eric Adams, told the AP.

He said Adams and his staff are being flooded with phone calls, emails and text messages reporting breakdowns in more than a dozen neighborhoods.

Compared to the 2016 elections, he said, "anecdotally, it seems worse, and there's confusion among poll workers about what to do."

Many voters nevertheless stuck it out, determined to cast their ballot.

"People are grumpy and frustrated but positive in a weird way, making jokes and talking to one another. I think it's because we all are in the 'no one will stop our vote today' mood,'" said Nikki Euell, an advertising producer who waited more than two hours to vote in Brooklyn's Greenpoint neighborhood.


The local breakdowns are a symptom of a larger problem with the nation's voting infrastructure, said Lawrence Norden, a voting technology expert with the Brennan Center.

More than 40 states use computerized voting machines that are more than a decade old or are no longer manufactured.

"It's further evidence, if any was needed, that it's long past time to modernize our voting infrastructure," Norden said. "Voters have a right to be frustrated by long lines. And they have a right to expect voting machines that work and have a paper backup."

Elsewhere, polling place confusion caused problems for voters and poll workers.

In Phoenix, a polling site was foreclosed on overnight. The owners of the property locked the doors, taking election officials by surprise. Voters had been sent to another precinct nearby, but Maricopa County Recorder Adrian Fontes tweeted that the location in Chandler was up and running shortly after 7 a.m. Tuesday.

For about an hour after polls opened Tuesday morning, a Sarasota County, Florida, precinct had to tell voters to come back later because their ballots were not available.

In one Indiana county, voting was snarled for hours because of what election officials say were computer problems checking in voters while in another part of the state a judge ordered 12 polling places in a northwestern Indiana county to stay open late after voting didn't start as scheduled.

In Texas, home of a hotly contested U.S. Senate race, delays were reported in Houston after apparent issues with registration check-in machines at some polling places.

And in El Paso, the U.S. Border Patrol canceled a "crowd control exercise" that was scheduled for Tuesday, following criticism from civil liberties groups that it could dissuade people from voting.

Border Patrol agent Fidel Baca confirmed Tuesday that the exercise in a Latino neighborhood of El Paso was canceled, but declined to say why. The Texas Civil Rights Project says the exercise, billed by the Border Patrol as a "mobile field force demonstration," was to be held within a half-mile of a polling site.

Tuesday's election marks the first nationwide voting since Russia targeted state election systems in the 2016 presidential race. Les autorités fédérales, nationales et locales s'emploient à renforcer la sécurité des myriades de systèmes électoraux du pays. They strengthened their cybersecurity protections and improved their communications and information sharing.

So far, there is no indication that Russia or another foreign player has attempted to launch cyberattacks against voting systems in any state, according to federal authorities. There was also no indication that any systems have been compromised that would prevent voting, change vote counts, or disrupt the ability to tally votes, U.S. officials said.

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Long and Balsamo reported from Washington.

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Associated Press writers Frank Bajak in Boston, Thomas Davies in Indianapolis, Verena Dobnik and Jennifer Peltz in New York, Jennifer Kay in Miami and Ryan Tarinelli in Dallas contributed to this story.

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Follow Christina Almeida Cassidy at https://twitter.com/AP_Christina , Colleen Long at http://twitter.com/ctlong1 and Michael Balsamo at http://twitter.com/MikeBalsamo1 .

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For full coverage of US mid-term elections by AP: http://apne.ws/APPolitics

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