RICHMOND, Va., Nov. 4 (UPI) -- Rainy weather in Virginia caused problems with wet ballots gumming up optical scanning machines, voting officials reported.
Nancy Rodrigues, secretary of the board of elections, said 25 percent of the polling places in Virginia use optical scanning machines, the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch reported. Voters with wet hands held the ballots as they were fed into the machines.
Voting officials whose precincts have the optical scanning machines said they put ballots in a locked box until they dry then would run them through the machines.
Rodrigues said officials received many reports of issues at the polls, but "the reality is we have not seen a pattern of widespread problems." She said there were some allegations of voter suppression in Richmond, Virginia Beach and Chesapeake in which people outside the polls asked voters headed inside about how they're voting.
