E-voting glitches, queues and activists hit voters

VOTERS grappled with partisan challenges to their registrations, broken equipment and other troubles yesterday as legions of lawyers, election-rights activists and computer scientists watched for signs of voter disenfranchisement.

Election officials in Iowa, Michigan and Minnesota fielded complaints of disruptions by the liberal interest group MoveOn.org, while in Ohio, a woman sued on behalf of people who did not receive absentee ballots on time, asking that they be allowed to cast provisional ballots.

In Philadelphia, Republican activists claimed voting machines already had recorded thousands of votes when polls opened. But city officials said the activists misunderstood numbers on odometers that records every vote ever cast not just those for this election.