Some Problems In Early Voting

From Florida To Oregon, Legal Wrangling & Technical Woes

(CBS/AP)  On election eve, voting officials from Florida to Oregon were already dealing with problems that could slow down voting and lead to court challenges if results are close.

Four years after the Florida debacle in which thousands of votes may not have counted, CBS News/New York Times poll conducted Thursday through Saturday found that most voters — 70 percent — were not concerned or not very concerned about whether their vote will be counted this year.

But Republicans and Democrats have traded charges for weeks over alleged voter fraud or plans to intimidate people trying to exercise their franchise.

Nowhere has seen more pre-election legal wrangling than Ohio, where courts have wrestled with a Republican challenge to the validity of 35,000 voting registrations and a Democratic complaint about GOP plans to monitor polling places.

Ohio Republicans on Monday appealed rulings that had barred polling place monitors. Early Tuesday, a federal appeals court said it is legal for political parties to have monitors at the polls to check whether individuals showing up to vote are the legally registered voters they claim to be.

There is still a chance that decision could be reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.

Elsewhere, officials in Boulder County, Colo. warned that election results might not be available until Wednesday night, saying extra time may be necessary because of a large projected turnout and the use of paper ballots.

"We didn't pick the hare; we picked the tortoise, the slow and steady winning-the-race type of system," said Jim Burrus, a spokesman for the county, known as an enclave of liberal voters.

The county's vote-counting machines bogged down in a recent test, choking on improperly marked ballots.

In Florida's Miami-Dade County, hundreds of people waited for hours Sunday to cast ballots during early voting. Many would-be voters saw the line, shook their heads and left.

Meanwhile, postal officials were in a tiff with Florida elections officials over absentee ballots, reports CBSNews.com's Lloyd de Vries.

The Postal Service said Broward County, Florida officials were trying to pin the blame on the USPS for not distributing absentee ballots in time. Spokesman Gerry McKiernan said the agency never saw one batch, and got another bunch Saturday afternoon, after the carriers had left for the day.

"Those ballots are being delivered today," McKiernan said. "I just hope to gosh that the voters can turn them around real quickly otherwise we're all going to be out of luck on that."

For the ballots to count, they must be returned to county offices by Tuesday night. Broward County residents should get the absentee ballots in time but those out of state may not.

In Oregon, Democrats have accused Republicans of trying to block thousands of young people's votes, following a request by GOP lawyers to review ballots cast by first-time voters in Oregon's most populous county.

In a letter issued Friday, attorneys for the Oregon Republican Party demanded that ballots cast by voters in Multnomah County who have not provided proof of identification be set aside and challenged if necessary.

Democrats challenged that request Sunday, saying it flies in the face of Oregon law, which does not require voters to show proof of identification when registering.

At stake are the votes of 207,053 first-time voters, of whom 73,226 are between the ages of 18 and 24. Nearly a third live in Multnomah County, which includes Portland, according to Secretary of State Bill Bradbury.

The Wisconsin state Republican Party questioned the validity of another 37,180 addresses of people registered to vote in Milwaukee. The party is demanding that city officials require identification from those voters at the polls.

City Attorney Grant Langley described the GOP request as "outrageous."

Last week, the party flagged more than 5,600 addresses as inaccurate, but Langley's office found hundreds of them to be correct.