Problems at a PA poll

I only have a minute to spare, so this diary is going to be relatively short. I am hoping that this incident is isolated, but if it isn’t it may be a major problem for the Obama campaign.

My aunt and I work our local polling site from open to close on every Election Day because we know nearly every democrat and independent here and we do everything in our power to GOTV. I live in a republican-leaning district in one of the five counties surrounding Philadelphia, an area that is crucial to the Obama campaign. I’ve been trying, unsuccessfully, to coordinate our efforts with the campaign to make sure that our poll had adequate supplies, volunteers, handouts, ect. I was worried when my team leader for the Obama campaign told me that there would be no campaign representation at the polls, and all volunteers would be used for phone banks and canvassing. I know this area, I know these people, and I know that the local democratic leadership is full of Hillary supporters. So we took it upon ourselves to gather yard signs, make posters, and print out informational flyers and documents from the Obama website, and decided to work independently at our polling location. It’s good that we did because things would have been disastrous if we hadn’t.

We arrived at the polls around 6:45am. There were signs up for every candidate but Obama. When the doors opened, we found that there was no Obama info inside. We were told that the local democratic chairperson was supposed to provide the site with both Obama and Clinton materials, but soon found out that the chairperson had stepped down and the was no one working in his place. Where did the Obama materials go? Nobody knew. So we put out our signs, and set up a table with the information that we managed to scrape together. Within the first hour, we started having problems. Voters were being turned away because they were not registered or their party affiliation hadn’t been changed from republican or independent. Provisional ballots were not offered. I didn’t learn about the issue until my aunt, who I personally registered, came to me and told me that they wouldn’t let her vote.

I called the Obama campaign to report the issue. They advised me to have each person fill out a provisional ballot and to keep a list of the voters so that they could contest the votes. Some voters had left due to anger and/or frustration, and I am now in the process of calling them to try to get them to come back and fill out the ballots. Hopefully I can get them all to return, every one of them was an Obama supporter.

I do not know if this is happening at other polling locations. I do, however, know that if my aunt and I hadn’t been there to press the issue, it would have never been addressed. The thing that frustrates me the most is that I personally registered some of these voters and know for a fact that the forms were submitted before the final deadline. I do not know if it a coincidence that these registrations just happened to slip through the cracks, but the election judge (who is a republican and has been extremely helpful) does not believe that these situations were completely accidental. It’s been insinuated that there may have been some type of foul play, but nothing that I can prove. Hopefully this won’t continue to be an issue, as we are now running low on provisional ballots.

I have to go now, I’ll try to post any updated information if I get the chance. To end on a positive note, I’d like to add that voter turnout has been good thus far, democratic voters are outnumbering republican voters about 2:1 here, and nearly all of the democrats have indicated that they are voting for Obama.

UPDATE: An upset Obama supporter just came to our polling site to request materials because there was no Obama signage or information at her polling site either. She went to vote and found that every candidate was represented but Obama's, so she went home and got her own yard signs and is setting up an Obama table on her own. (I called the local campaign office to let them know what is happening) What is going on here? I expected apathy from the local dems, but Obama's campaign has been nearly flawless to this point in my opinion. How is this happening? Who dropped the ball? I am so frustrated!