Lines, Ice, Shortages Of Ballots Pose Hurdles

As icy weather descended on the region late yesterday, Maryland gave voters an extra 90 minutes to reach a polling place, while Virginia and the District shut down on time.

That left Faridon Mohtashemi fuming outside his polling place in Fairfax County. After leaving work in Crystal City an hour early, then sitting in traffic for more than two hours, he arrived at Hayfield Secondary school at 7:03 p.m., three minutes after closing time.

"It's very disheartening that they couldn't extend the hours when they knew what was happening with the weather," said Mohtashemi, who had planned to vote for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.).

After receiving complaints about road conditions for several hours, the Maryland State Board of Elections obtained a court order at 7 p.m., an hour before that state's closing time, to extend voting hours.

Judge Ronald A. Silkworth wrote that he extended the hours "to provide a remedy that is in the public interest and protects the integrity of the electoral process." Only paper ballots were cast after 8 p.m., and they will not be counted for a week.

Still, the extension was welcomed by Ann-Marie Wildman, 43, of Largo. She pulled off the Beltway about 8 p.m., certain that she had missed her chance to vote. An accident on Interstate 395 and slippery roads had delayed her. "And then a couple of minutes later, they extended the hours," she said as she left Largo-Kettering Library after casting her ballot.

The weather was the one thing officials knew was out of their control as they prepared to accommodate yesterday's expected high voter turnout. What they could control, they tried feverishly to manage, juggling sporadic problems with voter registration, occasional machine malfunctions, overflowing parking lots and, in some places, shortages of paper ballots.

In Arlington County, some voters waited two hours. "It's never been this busy in my memory," said John Mazzella, 39, who waited with about 60 people at St. George's Parish Hall.

In the District, scattered reports of ballot shortages and malfunctioning ballot-reading machines began early and continued into the evening. Bill O'Field, spokesman for the D.C. Board of Elections and Ethics, said voter turnout was high compared with past presidential primaries, leading to a ballot shortage. The District is one of the few area jurisdictions that uses scanners to read paper ballots.

O'Field said some scanners jammed after clerks failed to properly tear the stubs before feeding ballots into the machines. Scanners broke down twice at Stuart-Hobson Middle School in Capitol Hill, and an auxiliary bin overflowed with ballots that had been cast but not processed. At one point, poll workers stacked cast ballots on top of a piano.

David Pardo, a volunteer poll watcher for the Obama campaign, said: "There's no hint of any wrongdoing. It's just chaos."

Most of the region's other jurisdictions rely on touch-screen voting machines, similar to an automated teller machine, and they appeared to work well yesterday. The touch screens are used throughout Maryland and in about half of Virginia's jurisdictions, but this year could be their last, as officials begin to replace them with other systems. In the District, the touch screens are available as an alternative to the paper and scanner system.

In Montgomery County, where extensive machine malfunctions occurred in the 2006 primary, Kenneth McDowell, an Internet consultant, said he was one of what appeared to be an unlucky few. When he showed up to vote at Walter Johnson High School in Bethesda, the electronic voter check-in system said he had already voted. Not so, said McDowell, who was given a provisional paper ballot but was worried whether it would be counted.

Prince George's County election officials said some people were unable to vote because they came to the polls unaware that Maryland has a closed primary, which means only voters registered with a party can cast ballots.

E. Kenneth Barksdale Jr., president of Prince George's elections board, said many people were drawn to vote by the presidential race but did not know the rules.

"These are people who voted in the general election, but they never identified their affiliation," Barksdale said. "That's the problem we're seeing."

Barksdale said he has been trying to make certain that no precinct goes without provisional ballots. He said icy roads made it difficult for ballots to get to some polling places.