Voting officials report a few hiccups at polls

Boston, Lawrence, and other cities avoided the major disputes of past elections and reported mostly minor glitches during yesterday's record voter turnout.

Boston reported hiccups, but no major problems, a far cry from 2006 when the city violated state election laws by failing to provide enough ballots during the November election. Because of the shortage, an official from the secretary of state's office was appointed to oversee this year's election.

No shortages were reported, said Brian McNiff, spokesman for Secretary of State William F. Galvin. "Things have gone well."

An exception was Cambridge, where scores of angry voters discovered yesterday morning that their names were missing from lists of eligible voters, which led to furious protests and an apology from the mayor, who said the problem was fixed quickly.

But in Boston, Geraldine Cuddyer, the city's top election official, said only minor problems surfaced, including broken ballot scanners at about half dozen polling places. Those were fixed within minutes. She said she was deluged with 1,500 e-mails, triple the typical amount, which she did not have time to answer.

"We are swamped," Cuddyer said. Still, she said, voting went smoothly at the polls.

"I've been amazed at the attitude of voters," said Cuddyer. "They knew they were going to wait. They brought their coffee, they brought their newspapers, they brought their iPods. They were prepared."

In Boston, a few volunteers were spotted telling people how to vote close to the polls in Chinatown and Codman Square. State law prohibits political activity within 150 feet of a polling place.

Gilbert Ho, president of the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association of New England, said he overheard two volunteers from a different organization telling people whom to vote for in Chinese and told them to stop.

"They're probably not intending to tell them, but by accident," he said. "We have to make sure they don't do that."

In Codman Square, Ruthella Livingston told a Jamaican immigrant, and newly naturalized citizen, how to vote on the ballot questions. The incident, captured by a Globe photographer on video, occurred at the door to the Codman Square Branch Library.

Livingston told the Globe photographer that she was only trying to help voters and that she was working with ACORN, an activist group. ACORN Massachusetts director Mimi Ramos said Livingston was not on the organization's volunteer list.

Lawrence and Worcester, two cities that have had voting problems in the past, particularly among people who weren't fluent in English, reported that things were running smoothly, also amid surging turnout.

Scattered voting disputes popped up throughout the region.

In New Hampshire, Republicans filed a last-minute lawsuit against the secretary of state alleging that poll workers were positioning Republican observers too far away from the same-day voter registration booths, so they couldn't verify that voters were really eligible to vote.

"We were not in a position where we could see and hear the registration," said Jim Merrill, Republican presidential candidate John McCain's legal counsel in New Hampshire.

They filed suit in Hillsborough County Superior Court and were granted full access by 3 p.m., he said.

In Massachusetts, the secretary of state's office criticized two WEEI-AM local talk radio hosts, John Dennis and Gerry Callahan, for telling morning listeners that the elections had been postponed until today. State law prohibits interfering with elections.

Dennis and Callahan have declared themselves to be McCain supporters, the Associated Press reported. The Globe was unable to reach the talk show hosts for comment.

In Cambridge, Mayor E. Denise Simmons found a solution to yesterday's problems: an apology.

She said she regretted the problems, but insisted that they were quickly corrected and said that the overwhelming majority of voters in her city zipped through the polling places.

"It turns out that an incomplete voter list had been distributed to the City's polling locations," the mayor said in a statement released by her office. "I deeply regret any inconvenience this may have caused voters."

Globe correspondent Matt Collette contributed to this report.