Dems Seek Vote Extension do to Voters being turned away!!!!

Voter turnout: "Very high"
By George Merritt and Jeffrey Leib
Denver Post Staff Writer
Article Last Updated:11/07/2006 07:45:53 PM MST

Bianca Pasilla 17, sits in a chair to keep her older sister, Beatrice, 24, company as theyt wait in line at Quigg Newton Senior Center to vote on Nov. 7, 2006. (Post / John Leyba)

Some of the city's 55 voting centers reported waits of more than two hours as polls closed at 7 p.m. Election officials assured those waiting that they would get to vote tonight, provided they had the paitence to wait.

Voters said buses pulled up to the Convention Center, which had a two-hour wait at 5:30 p.m., and took nearly 100 voters to a voting center at West 11th Avenue and Federal Boulevard, where the wait was less than 30 minutes. The buses waited for the voters and returned them to the Convention Center, without identifying who paid for them.

Secretary of State Gigi Dennis announced as the polls closed that voter turnout in Colorado was "very high."

Meanwhile, Denver election officials admitted this afternoon that the
Voting Lines

To see estimated wait times at Denver voting centers click here.
city's new computerized electronic balloting system was overwhelmed almost from the start of voting this morning.

Denver Election Commission spokesman Alton Dillard II said the system's "e poll book" laptop computers--which were used to verify each voter--were bogged down early in the day, forcing election judges to manually call other election officials by telephone to certify the voters. The system became so bogged down by 1 p.m. that election officials were forced to shut down the computers and reboot them, Dillard said.

Around the same time, officials put out an urgent call to all city employees with election experience to come down and be sworn in as additional election judges on an emergency basis. A total of 100 additional judges had been sworn in by 3 p.m. and deployed to some of the city's 55 voting centers.

The election commission also located additional laptop computers, which it shipped out to the 10 slowest voting centers, including the Washington Park Rec Center, Botanic Gardens, Cherry Creek Community Church, Corona Presbyterian Church, Cook Park Rec Center, Tattered Cover Bookstore in Lodo, New Hope Baptist Church, the Wellington Webb city office building , Harvard Gulch Rec Center and Calvary Baptist
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Church.

As election officials scrambled to speed up the voting process, Denver District Court Judge Sheila Rappaport denied a emergency request from the Democratic Party to keep Denver's voting centers open for an additional two hours this evening due to the faulty computers.

Attorney Mark Grueskin, representing the FairVoteColorado.org, had asked the court to extend the voting hours to 9 p.m., because voters were becoming disenfranchised from the numerous incidents of computers crashing and because of the abnormally long lines at the polls.

But attorney Richard Westfall, representing the Republicans, countered that there had been no evidence that voters couldn't go elsewhere to vote or return to the same poll at a later time.

Rappaport
Mary Ann Lejan waits patiently at the Athmar Recreation Center for the computers to begin working again on Nov. 7, 2006. She was able to cast her vote after about 45 minutes. (Post / Lyn Alweis)
told lawyers for both parties she didn't have the authority to keep the polls open, citing case law from the states of Missouri and Arkansas.

Rep. Diana DeGette, D-Colo., who waited outside the courtroom for a ruling, said she was very upset about Denver's polling process. "The computers have been up and down all day," she said. "This is a nightmare throughout the city."

Secretary of State Gigi Dennis responded to the court's ruling by saying, "I'm pleased with the judge's ruling. The law concerning polling hours is very clear and it would be a disservice to treat voters across the state differently."

Douglas County election officials reported serious delays in several voting centers. One center, the Grange in the Meadows, was
Gubernatorial candidate Bob Beauprez, during one of many television news interviews at GOP party headquarters at the Denver Marriott Tech Center on Nov. 7, 2006. (Post / Andy Cross)
forced to close for one hour to deal with technical problems. Party officials there decided against going to court after hearing of Judge Rappaport's ruling.

Westerly Creek, 8800 E. 28th Ave., ran out of provision ballots before noon. Voters who were seeking shorter lines arrived and quickly the line grew to more than a hundred people long.

FairVoteColorado.org reported provisional ballot shortages at numerous other sites as well, including Glenarm Recreation Center, Park Hill Methodist, Manual High School, and Montbello Recreation Center.

Denver Election Commission spokesman Alton Dillard said there was no systemwide failures and that the delays were being caused by heavy voter turnout combined with "congestion" in the computer
Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter stood in a long line at the Washington Park Recreation Center in Denver to vote on Tuesday, Nov. 7, 2006. He arrived about 7:45 am and left at about 9:30 am after voting on computerized voting machines which contributed to the delay. (Post / Lyn Alweis)
network used to confirm voter registeration. "it's our application. It got overloaded," Dillard said.

Officials at Manual High School said their computers had crashed three times today. They were running at 2:30, but more than 99 people were in line.

At lunch time, Denver voters waiting in line at the Botanic Gardens vote center were urged to go to Manual's site because the wait at the Gardens might be at least another hour.

When Kim Smith, one of the relocated voters, arrived at Manual, she found a long line that crawled for at least an hour just to get to the door to the school.

Once she got just inside, election officials said the voting process was stopping because of computer problems.

When officials tried to form two lines out of the one stalled line, people started yelling because it put some voters ahead of others who had waited longer, said Smith, who lives in Washington Park.

Election officials did not know how to handle the crowd, Smith said. Shortly after 1 p.m., Denver Police arrived to calm restive voters.

Earlier, Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper emerged from inside the Manual voting site and said This can't happen again, recalled Smith, who finally voted around 1:30, nearly two hours after she arrived at the Denver school.

Vaishali Patel, who lives in Denver s Capitol Hill neighborhood, arrived at her voting center near East Eight Avenue and Downing Street after 11 a.m. and was told the wait would be two hours. She was urged to go to the Botanic Gardens site.

There, officials told her the wait also would be two hours and she was urged to go the Manual.

Like Smith, she arrived at the Denver school a little before noon and endured nearly two hours of lines moving in fits and starts before she reached the voting booth.

I feel like I have to; I made it this far, Patel said, when she was about 20 people away from the booth.

As of 2:15 p.m., the line at the Botanic Gardens was just as long as it was this morning, snaking down the street to 11th Ave.

Democratic gubernatorial candidate Bill Ritter waited an hour and a half to vote at the Washington Park Recreational Center this morning. When he arrived at about 7:45 a.m., there were more than 150 people in line ahead of him. Several people said they were frustrated by the long lines. Paul Barsa, a 35-year-old who said he works in accounting, said he was "grouchy" and wished that he waited until the afternoon to vote.

Ritter said, "I hope that people will be patient. It's important for them to vote."

The Denver Election Commission reported that problems began right at 7 a.m. as computer problems at the voter-check in stations bogged down, creating a bottleneck in the first hour of voting as a rush to the polls overloaded the system.

Power failures slowed voting at some locations, commission spokesman Dillard said.

Voting machines had backup power and weren't affected, but laptop computers used to verify voter registration were knocked out, forcing workers to call the central office for the information, he said.

Mark Coles, a computer technician with the Denver Election Commission, said the election system had to be split onto three separate servers to handle the backlog.

"It's just like traffic on (Interstate) 25," Coles said. "It's as if we are building two more I-25s right next to it" to ease the traffic congestion.

But the fix did not come in time to help some voters who hoped to vote before heading to work.

At Denver Botanic Gardens, a line several hundred voters long stretched out of the gates and down the block more than half way to 11th Avenue.

"We will not get to vote today," said a frustrated Lauren Brockman as he left the Botanic Gardens.

He lined up at 6:45 a.m. hoping to beat the rush, only to stand in line for close to an hour before leaving.

But an hour wait was short, compared to some.

At Corona Presbyterian Church, voters were being told to expect about a two-hour wait as they snaked around the building.

"All my friends, I told them to vote between 10 a.m. and 2 p.m.," said Rob Weil, the election judge supervisor at Corona. "But if it keeps being this slow, this line will stay."

Several people left the line at Park Hill Methodist Church after they were told equipment was broken.

Lines of up to 300 people formed at some Denver polling places.

"This is positively ridiculous," said 82-year-old Jack McCroskey, clutching his cane while waiting at the Washington Park polling place in southeast Denver. "At 82, I don't deserve to have to stand out here. What if it had been 10 degrees today?"

Johnson Recreation Center at 4809 Race St. in Denver reported all its voting machines were down at 1:15 p.m.. "I'm just waiting on my IT man to call me back," said Nathan Martinez, the center's election supervisor. Service was restored by 1:45 p.m. During that time his line grew from just a handful to over a hundred.

Augustana Lutheran, 5000 E Alameda Ave., also reported its machines out of service at 1:15 p.m., with no estimated time for repair. By 1:50 p.m., a secretary said the machines were working but wasn't able to provide details.

As of 2 p.m., Tattered Cover Lodo's voting line was about an hour long, and machines were working.

At the Athmar Recreation Center in southwest Denver, polling station manager Frank Lujan said the voting computer system was down twice today, once for about 30 minutes and once for about 45 minutes. As of 2 p.m., the system was running and voters report wait times of about 45 minutes.

"Any time you have new technology you have challenges," Mayor John Hickenlooper said, at midday, just before the system began experiencing even wider outages. "We've got dozens of city employees out volunteering asking people if they want a lift to a vote center with a shorter line." Hickenlooper conceded the situation "is not good."

The problems weren't limited to Denver. On the Post's West Watch blog, Karen A. reported waiting two hours and 45 minutes in Parker at Southeast Christian Church. "Sometimes 10 of the 12 voting booths were unoccupied while voters were processed," she said.

At 1:30 p.m., Secretary of State Gigi Dennis released a statement saying that things were going smoothly, statewide.

"If you are at the polls by 7 p.m. you will cast a ballot. All voters in line will be able to vote," she said.

Staff writer George Merritt can be reached at 303-954-1657 or gmerritt@denverpost.com.