When Jayne Vanderwaart thinks of the situation she encountered at the polls Tuesday morning at Western School of Technology in Catonsville, she stresses one word: “Horrific.”
“It was a horrible, horrible situation,” she said. “It was a mess.”
Vanderwaart, the Republican chief election judge at the site, said a mistake on the part of a moving company left her polling place without any voting machines.
The machines had mistakenly been delivered to Western High School for girls in Baltimore.
Vanderwaart tried to alert Baltimore County Board of Elections officials to the problem on Monday night, but they insisted that the Catonsville school had the machines, and she just couldn?t find them, she said.
“We looked everywhere,” she said. “We opened every door and closet in the school.”
Officials eventually got machines set up at the correct Western by about 10:30 a.m. ? 3 1/2 hours after the polls opened.
Jacqueline McDaniel, Baltimore County?s elections director, said the county had “several” other facilities that encountered problems, “but the machines not being delivered to Western was by far the worst,” she said. “That poor lady kept calling and saying, ?The machines aren?t here. The machines aren?t here.? ”
The Western mix-up was just one of dozens of errors and snafus reported to the various county boards of elections in the Baltimore area.
Gene Raynor, Baltimore City director of elections, said the city, like surrounding counties, had a “bumpy start” to election day ? causing officials to keep polls open an extra hour, until 9 p.m.
“Both Democratic and Republican judges didn?t show up in various areas of the city,” Raynor said. “We shot out replacements as quickly as possible. When you employee 1,500 people for one day, you are bound to run into some obstacles.”
Betty Nordaas, Howard County?s elections director, said the county had “issues” early on with its electronic poll books.
“Some of the machines were freezing up; they would lose power; and it would appear that the voter had already voted, when the voter hadn?t voted,” she said. “We physically went out there and got the poll books going again.”
Kim Atkins, Harford County Board of Elections director, also said she encountered the same poll book problem.
“The most frustrating issue this year for the voters was printer problems with electronic poll book,” she said. “When voters enter encoded card, if they don’t place it in the machine at a 90-degree angle, this causes the machine to boot down. Once the machine is turned on again, voters receive ?already voted? error.”
Carroll County likewise suffered a rocky start when screens of the new electronic polling books froze and others refused to boot up, said Patricia Matsko, county elections director.
Five machines at various polling precincts around Carroll had to be replaced and voters were given provisional ballots to cast their votes.
Anne Arundel County officials encountered scattered problems with polls that opened 10 to 15 minutes late.
Examiner Staff Writer Kelsey Volkmann, Stephanie Tracy and Jessica Novak contributed to this story.
