No widespread voting problems reported across South, nation

Despite glitches with voting machines in some precincts and charges of voter intimidation in isolated races, yesterday's election seems to have been free of the sort of widespread, catastrophic breakdowns that plagued the 2000 and 2004 contests.

CBS News reports that it found "notable problems in roughly 15 states, although all were sporadic. Most of the issues came early in the morning when poll workers had problems starting up their new electronic voting machines."

Officials with the U.S. Election Assistance Commission, established to help states after the 2000 meltdown in Florida, said they were satisfied with the results, according to the Los Angeles Times.

As reported here yesterday, there were some problems at precincts in Colorado, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania, as well as in the Southern states of Florida, Georgia, Maryland and Mississippi.

In New Orleans, some voters had to be redirected to correct poll locations and a handful of voting machines malfunctioned, but there were no generalized problems in the city's elections, the first to be overseen by the recently installed Orleans Parish Clerk of Criminal Court, according to the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

However, the NAACP Legal Defense and Education Fund told the newspaper that its monitors reported malfunctions in at least six precincts with only one voting machine, with one machine out of service for more than an hour.

Regarding one of the more serious problems that arose on election day, the FBI and State Board of Elections in Virginia will be investigating allegations of voter suppression tactics in the hotly contested Senate race between Republican George Allen and Democrat Jim Webb, as Chris Kromm reported here yesterday.

The Virginia Board of Elections says Webb is leading that race by a razor-thin margin.

For more details on the voting problems reported nationwide, visit the Election Protection Coalition's Web site.