Description

Harris County Pct 545 (Parker Williams Library):

Poll opened 5 minutes late due to technical difficulties, doors opening at 7:05.

One half of the eight total eSlate machines remained offline until 7:40.

At least one voter (surnamed Davis?) indicated at 7:25 that he could not wait in line for his turn at the eSlate any longer, due to needing to go to work; he asked for a paper ballot was told to wait, since a poll worker "needs to open them" and was already busy trying to fix the machines. Nobody followed up with him. He was forced to leave before being able to cast his ballot. Others waiting in the line outside (voting room had limited capacity) may have also left, but I did not see them.

I myself arrived at 6:50 am but could not vote until 8:00am; Voter Roll indicated I had asked for a ballot by mail, even though I hadn't asked for one and never got one. Poll workers spent an hour on and off the phone before someone told them the proper procedure was to give me a provisional ballot.

Although all the poll workers were nice and tried hard to deal with problems, they were under-prepared and ill-equipped to help out.