A nonprofit group sued North Carolina’s Board of Elections Tuesday asking for an extension in poll hours in a heavily Democratic county.
The suit concerning Durham County, which was filed in nearby Wake County by Democracy North Carolina, cites a technical snafu in several precincts earlier in the day that forced election officials to switch to paper roll books from the electronic voter check-in system.
The group requested that polls remain open an additional 90 minutes in Durham County, which has a significant African-American population.
Early Tuesday evening, the state elections board extended voting in one precinct in Columbus County, a small county in the southeastern corner of the state. The county asked for 45 minutes but the state board allowed only 30 minutes extra voting time.
A hearing on the matter began at 6 p.m. ET.
“As a result of these events, voting in Durham County was interrupted at multiple sites for at least one hour,” Democracy North Carolina said in a statement.
Earlier Tuesday, the Durham County Board of Elections requested that voting in the county’s voting time be extended by 90 minutes, Durham County Board of Elections spokesperson Briana Khan told CNN.
By state rules, all voting locations in the county have to be affected for an extension of voting hours. The county has brought in 60 additional staff to work on providing more data to the state on how much the voting has been affected, Khan said.
At least five precincts in North Carolina had to switch to paper poll books earlier in the day. The move came “out of an abundance of caution,” according to Patrick Gannon, spokesman for the North Carolina State Board of Elections.
Longer wait times
The “glitches” in the check-in software forced the precincts to switch to paper poll books to check-in voters, but no votes cast will be affected, Gannon said.
The error, however, did cause longer-than-expected wait times at the polling locations, according to the North Carolina chapter of the NAACP.
“Number one: We demand that they fix this glitch,” Rev. Dr. William Barber, president of North Carolina NAACP, said in a statement obtained by CNN. “There were no glitches in early voting. Why now and why in a heavy black voting area?”
Thirty-seven percent of registered voters in Durham County are black.
According to Khan, the state board of elections is helping the county officials print extra poll books and get them to the affected precincts.
The county signed a new contract last year to use a new e-voting system designed by VR Systems. A spokeswoman for VR Systems declined comment about the problems in Durham County.
Gov. Pat McCrory, who is running for re-election Tuesday, told CNN that he had spoken to election officials and that they had it under control.
“I want the votes counted as quick as they can in all counties in North Carolina,” McCrory said. “I just talked to the elections board supervisor and said that I want every vote to count, and every vote will count.”
“We have our lawyers going to locations,” Barber said. “They also must encourage people not to leave because the problem is with system not the people.”
Barber told CNN that the group has lawyers throughout the state and that they are not ruling out legal action on any voter suppression issues.
Issue began early Tuesday
In past elections, the county had used paper roll books to check in voters, but switched to electronic check-in in October 2015, according to Khan.
The issue began around 6:45 a.m. Tuesday and all locations had a paper backup, Khan said. She said that the county board of elections had not heard reports that any wait times were longer than 45 minutes.
“We were having sporadic problems just getting all of our computers up at one time. One would go up and the other would drop off line,” said Glenn Reynolds, a precinct judge, who said problems began as soon as people began voting at his site. He said the system that they use to check voters in and verify their information was not consistently working.
At least one precinct in Durham County ran out of authorization to vote forms that all voters must fill out before they vote, the Durham County Board of Elections confirmed.
Precinct 31 was out of the forms that all voters must sign to before casting a ballot for about an hour and a half Tuesday morning before more forms were delivered.
The N.C. NAACP said the polling location turned away at least 45 people in one hour because of the lack of forms. However, county election officials stressed that while some voters did voluntarily choose to leave because of the wait, no voters were turned away.
