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Tuesday, November 07, 2006

Late-opening precincts a big problem

A follow-up to our earlier post about Durham County, North Carolina, and their enlightened decision to extend poll hours at a precinct where 100 voters where waiting this morning at a locked church. Election Central at TPM Cafe is reporting that most precincts that experienced such delays WON'T be extending their hours:
Voters in Illinois' Kane County will have until 9:30 PM local time to vote, according to Chicago's CBS-2 News. That gives voters an extra half-hour. Indiana's Delaware County also extended its voting hours, until 8:40 local time.

Officials in Cook County, Ill., Colorado, Florida, Utah and Pennsylvania have been asked to grant extra time for voters to go to the polls, according to the non-partisan Election Protection pollwatching coalition. So far, none has agreed to do so.
As we said, late-opening precincts are one of those small "glitches" which can result in lots of discouraged -- disenfranchised, really -- voters.
posted by Chris Kromm at 5:15 PM | Email this post | Post a Comment
1 Comments:
Blogger R. Neal said...

Had one precinct here in my home county in TN with voting machine problems this morning that caused a two hour delay. We asked around 5:30 PM if they were going to stay open longer to compensate and we were told "Polls close at 8 PM."

11/07/2006 6:58 PM  

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CHRIS KROMM blogs three days a week for Facing South. Chris is Executive Director of the Institute for Southern Studies and publisher of the Institute’s award-winning magazine, Southern Exposure.

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