In Florida, Glitches Leave Thousands of Unscanned Ballots Piling Up, Warns Watchdog

Is Florida headed toward another Election Night ballot fiasco?

Election watchdog groups tonight are warning of widespread voting problems in some of Florida's most populous counties, saying that thousands of completed ballots are piling up in unsecured areas because of malfunctioning optical voting equipment.

"Optical scan machines in some counties are not accepting ballots for whatever reason, so the ballots are not being fed into machines," Barbara Arnwine, executive director of the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, a member of the nonpartisan voting-watchdog group Election Protection, told U.S. News.

Arnwine says that in Miami-Dade, Sarasota, and Hillsborough (home to Tampa) counties, among others, unscanned ballots have been placed in lockboxes until scanning machines can be fixed. But in some cases the lockboxes are running out of room, she says, so officials have been putting ballots in duffel bags, which are overflowing as well.

"In some places, ballots are lying on the floor," she says. "This is no kind of election security."

Arnwine says that Election Protection has asked the state of Florida to issue a directive to polling sites telling them how to properly secure ballots until they can be scanned. In addition, some precincts appear to have waits exceeding three hours tonight, suggesting that problems may get worse before they get better.

The Florida Division of Elections did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

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