Lawyers duke it out at polls

With the second-largest trove of registered voters in Pennsylvania, Allegheny County endured a… With the second-largest trove of registered voters in Pennsylvania, Allegheny County endured a complex election process, slowed by conflicts between both sides of the political spectrum and accentuated by a record-high turnout of Pitt students.

Nearly all the lawyers monitoring the election in Pittsburgh agreed that the city was the epicenter of Americans’ struggles to make their voices heard in yesterday’s general election.

Many politicians have said that the presidential election results may be determined by an unexpectedly high voter turnout among 18- to 25-year-olds — the age range including most college students.

“In 2000, 600 Pitt students voted in the election,” said a volunteer with the United States Student Association at 6 p.m. last night. “Twice that have voted already.”

The allotment of provisional ballots to voting precincts produced major delays. When the polls opened at 7 a.m., each precinct in Oakland had 12 provisional ballots, with the exception of Towers Lobby, which had 36. Less than five hours into the day, most precincts had already run out.

“The primary issue is the lack of provisional ballots,” said Naomi Stevenson, an official from the Allegheny County Board of Elections. “That’s why it’s been such a problem.”

Provisional ballots were meant to offer security against errors and fraud in voter registration, which caused concerns among students who vote while at school in Pittsburgh. Several political figures, including Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., and Rev. Jesse Jackson, have reminded voters to demand provisional ballots if technical problems threatened to prevent them from voting in the booths.

Lawyers representing both the Democratic and Republican parties raised concerns about student registrations that appeared incorrect. At least several students were unable to vote in booths after lawyers cited state laws forbidding them from casting ballots without revised registrations.

Some election officials were forced to seek emergency solutions.

“We’ve been sending people Downtown to get a court order that allows them to vote normally,” said Blithe Runsdorf, judge of election at Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Memorial Hall.

Many students were shuttled from their polling places to the County Board of Elections, Downtown, by volunteers with the Election Protection Coalition, who also drove students to their correct polling places if they went to the wrong ones.

“We expected this would happen,” said Pete Vitelli, a Pitt law student with the Election Protection Coalition. “We had limited resources, but we had a plan to get people to the right place.”

For hundreds of students, the right place was the County Office Building on Ross Street.

“We stopped counting applications for provisional ballots at 300,” Stevenson said. “That was just after noon.”

From the Board of Elections, people were sent across the street to the City-County Building, where a judge from the Court of Common Pleas signed court orders that allowed people to vote in booths, avoiding the paper provisional ballot.

Pitt freshman Cory Stansbury stood in line for more than two hours in Towers Lobby, only to find his voting precinct never received his online registration.

“I’ve spent the whole day just trying to vote,” Stansbury said. “It’s my right, and I want it.”

Judge Lawrence J. O’Toole of the Allegheny County Court of Common Pleas signed Stansbury’s ballot at 5:45 p.m., sending him back to Towers Lobby to finally cast his vote.

“I’ve signed 40 court orders in the last hour and a half,” O’Toole said. “When it’s all said and done, judges will have signed hundreds of these today.”

O’Toole’s chamber was full of dozens of lawyers affiliated with Democratic, Republican and independent entities, who worked to ensure that voters with problems received provisional ballots.

Peter Russ, a lawyer with the Bush campaign, estimated that “there were four Democratic lawyers for every Republican lawyer in the room.”

“We need to do whatever is possible, so everyone who can will be able to vote,” Rush said.

Their efforts paid off when a court ruled that provisional ballots could be cast until 9:30 p.m. — an unprecedented decision in Allegheny County that allowed more people time to cast their votes.

Allegheny County has registered more than 60,000 new voters in the last six months; more than half are in the Democratic Party.

At least a handful of those new voters cast their first votes last night after a short voyage through the legal process.

“That’s my next step in this journey,” said Pitt sophomore Kristen Walzelek as she got her court order signed. “It will be a long night, but it will be worth it.”