PA: High Turnout, Some Machine Problems

Good weather and intense interest appear to be producing a high turnout in Pennsylvania's presidential primary Tuesday. However, there were reports of long lines and delays of more than an hour before voting in African-American neighborhoods in Philadelphia as a result of voting machine failures, according to the 1-866-MY-VOTE-1 hotline.

The voter hotline taking calls from across Pennsylvania reported there were problems with electronic voting machines freezing at the start of voting, as well as people not finding their names on voter rolls at precincts, voter hotline officials said.

By midday, callers to the 1-866-MY-VOTE-1 hotline had made 850 calls, according to Harry Cook of InfoVoter Technologies, which screen the requests for help and forward callers to local election officials to help them. The calls came from 710 polling locations across the state, although most were from Philadelphia and then Pittsburgh, the two largest cities.

Of those calls, 150 people left complaints that were recorded and forwarded to local election officials. Shortly after 7 AM, when polls were slated to open, there were a handful of complaints of precincts that failed to do so. In the next few hours, there were complaints of electronic voting machine failures in several precincts leaving voters without any machines to vote on.