We already had reports that some voters had been turned away from a polling place because their names were not on the rolls, even though they had registered well before the Oct 4th deadline. Even worse, others with valid registration cards issued by the county were being forced to fill out provisional ballots because their names were missing from the rolls. The Washington county election office had set up a 1-800 number for election day, for people to call with questions (such as where is my polling place or where am I registered to vote). But the 1-800 line wasn’t working and word came back that the phone system in the elections office was down. A decision was quickly made by the Kerry volunteer lawyers to send over somebody with a cell phone so that we could communicate with the elections office and help the people coming to the Democratic HQ with questions. One of the local lawyers volunteered to go, but I suggested that answering the phone and writing down names and addresses did not really require someone to have passed the bar exam. I volunteered in his place...

Then an amazing and frightening thing started to happen. I started to get calls from the judges of election at the different precincts around the county. They couldn’t get through to the board of elections either. They had a direct dial number as well as the 800 number, but both numbers were busy all the time.  It was like trying to call in to win one of those radio contests when hundreds of people all try to dial the same number at once. So, when the election judges heard from some of the Democrats that they could reach me inside the elections office, the judges asked for my number and began calling me. To their credit, they asked me who I was and what my party allegiance was (and from what part of the country was area code 213). I tried my best to have the board of elections call them back directly, but I was soon the only reliable way many of the judges could get messages into the office. They were also trying to check on where certain voters were registered – same as we were...

Pretty soon, I started getting a new round of calls from the judges of election at each precinct. When they couldn’t get through to the 1-800 line or to me (my cell phone only allows one call waiting at a time; if I get a third call while I’m holding two it goes straight to voicemail) they had the voters cast provisional ballots. And guess what? Most of the polling places had only been allotted 15 provisional ballots. This decision was made by extrapolating how many people had needed them in the primaries, but without considering first-time voter turn-out in this election and without foreseeing the problem with the 1-800 number. Within an hour, many of the polling places had gone through half of the allotted provisional ballots. The busier the phone lines, the more provisional ballots got cast, but the harder it was to get the message into the office that a polling place was running out...