CHESTERFIELD COUNTY, Va. — Tuesday morning, dozens of Chesterfield voters lined up at precincts across the county hoping to cast their ballots right at 6 a.m., but some technical difficulties with electronic poll books caused delays.
At Swift Creek Elementary School, Chief Poll Officer Henamul Huq said they had issues starting their electronic system. Hug said he believes the last time the system was shut off, it was not done properly.
"We had to restart those systems again, and we had to reboot," Huq explained. "We had to call the back office. There's a specific way to reboot the system, not the regular computers, so we have to reboot the system, and it took little bit of time."
Huq was likely referring to the electronic poll books, which are used to look up a voter’s name and address to verify they are registered to vote in that precinct.
State election officials noted during an 11 a.m. news briefing Tuesday morning that Chesterfield County, Nottoway County and Richmond City all experienced issues with the electronic poll books. They also noted new electronic poll books went out this year in some locations, and that there may be a learning curve for some precinct workers to get them up and operating correctly.
However, state election officials said they had not received reports of issues with the actual voting machines at that time.
"There was a few people in the line in the morning, but once the system was up and running, it was good and everything was fine," said Huq.
At Meadowbrook High School in Chesterfield, a line formed outside the school building Tuesday morning as some voters had to wait to cast their ballots because officials said their electronic poll books were also experiencing issues.
One poll worker at the school said they temporarily switched over to paper poll books to allow people to vote instead of wait in line. A few people whose names were not in those paper poll books had to cast provisional ballots.
But they’ve since switched back over to the electronic poll books, which makes the process a lot faster.
"Once they got to go in, there was a malfunction in the machines inside," said Chesterfield resident, Vince Wilson. "And they had to wait and wait and wait. And then they went on to do it by hand. They had to stay in there so long to vote, you know, and a couple of them came out really upset."
CBS 6 reached out to Chesterfield County officials to try to find out if any other locations experienced issues with their electronic poll books this morning.
They released the following statement:
“This morning it was brought to our attention that the electronic poll books (what is used to check voters in) at some polling precincts were not working properly due to a technical issue. This was not countywide and the ballots and scanners were fine. Election staff immediately started using the back-up paper poll books, which is standard operating procedure, to check in voters until the electronic poll books were back up and running. Technical support is onsite and the issue has been resolved. All electronic poll books are now working.”
