Luzerne County polls to stay open later due to voting issues
PHILADELPHIA (CBS/AP) -- In Pennsylvania's Luzerne County, polls are staying open an extra two hours after several polling places needed their supply of ballots replenished on Tuesday. County solicitor Mike Butera said no voters were turned away, more ballots were being delivered to every precinct and polls will stay open until 10 p.m.
Aside from smaller hitches, with polls open across the country, no widespread problems with ballots, long lines or voter intimidation were reported early on, though there were hiccups in some places, which is typical on any Election Day.
Vote tabulators malfunctioned in a county in New Jersey and one in Arizona, prompting assurances from officials that ballots would be counted. In one Pennsylvania county, polling places scrambled to replenish low supplies of paper ballots.
"These are things we see in every election cycle," said Susannah Goodman, director of election security at Common Cause, a group that advocates for voting access. "There's nothing majorly concerning this morning."
Since the last nationwide election in 2020, former President Donald Trump and his allies have succeeded in sowing wide distrust about voting by promoting false claims of extensive fraud. The effort has eroded public confidence in elections and democracy, led to restrictions on mail voting and new ID requirements in some GOP-led states and prompted death threats against election officials.
Election Day this year is marked by concerns about further harassment and the potential for disruptions at polling places and at election offices where ballots will be tallied. Election officials say they are prepared to handle any issues that arise, urging voters not to be deterred.
Before the pandemic, many states had begun to shift away from a single day of voting to offer days or weeks of early, in-person voting and ballots sent through the mail.
No major problems were reported during the early voting period. But some of Pennsylvania's largest counties were scrambling to help voters fix mail-in ballots that had flaws such as incorrect dates or missing signatures on the envelopes used to send them in. That has led to confusion and legal challenges in the battleground state where a few thousand ballots may be enough to sway outcomes of statewide races.
Heading into Tuesday, nearly 44.5 million people across the country had already cast ballots.
