Mindy Moretti is the editor at Electionline.org, the nation’s only nonpartisan, non-advocacy clearinghouse for election reform news and information. In her current weekly update, called “The Election That Was”, she takes a state-by-state look at the 2016 General Election. She wrote, “The 2016 election cycle seemed to drag on forever and even today [November 17] there are still several million ballots left to be counted, results to be canvassed, audited and certified.”

In Election Attitude – How Internet Voting Leads to a Stronger Democracy, I advocate for Internet voting and describe how it could solve many election problems. Some strong opponents of Internet voting say we should leave the system the way it is. Keep the status quo. Only with paper can we have good elections, they say. Mindy’s report shows how the status quo works, describing state by state how things went. I have extracted the following list of some of the problems from her report. All of the problems did not happen in all of the states, but the number of problems encountered was astounding. To say it is time to modernize is an understatement. Internet voting can solve most of these problems.

 Long lines with wait times extending to two hours

 Broken voting machines and tabulators

 Voting machine storage inadvertently wiped clean

 Lack of poll worker training

 Relocated polling places causing confusion to voters

 Missing or inaccurate voter registrations

 Same day registration problems caused delays

 College students could not vote, their registrations were not submitted

 A poll worker handed out pre-marked ballots

 Ballot shortages

 Ran out of Spanish-language ballots

 Delayed vote counting due to software problems

 Votes from a voting machine used for early voting were not counted

 Ballots had to be recounted due to errors

 Millions of votes still not counted in California

 Voting websites gave out incorrect information to voters

 Slow reporting due to software problems

 Voters with disabilities had to vote curbside due to inaccessible site

 Thousands of voters had to find new polling place due to flooding

 Large number of provisional ballots rejected

 Power failures at polling place

 Polling places opened late

 Appeals made to judges to extend hours due to polling place problems

 Poll workers had to be removed for name calling

 Voters fighting with each other

 Poll worker altercations

 Voters blocked from entering polling place

 Voters intimidated at polls

 Voter’s car stolen while voting

 Election judge assaulted

 Pens leaking ink

 Election judges arrived late, fell asleep, or had to be removed

 Problems with vote my mail