UA News

The Election Protection Team has received more than 900 calls by 4 p.m. from across Arizona.

A group of students and their legal colleagues began gathering at the James E. Rogers College of Law just before 6 a.m. to begin poll watching and to manage the Election Day command center located there.

It didn't take long for the University of Arizona student-led Election Protection Team – a volunteer group of students, faculty and attorneys – to receive the first report of an irregularity at a polling station.

And the day continued that way.

"It's been busy – more than we thought," Emily Kane, a third-year College of Law student, said at 4 p.m.

Kane and Erin Ford, also a third-year UA law student, initiated the team along with the help of others on and off campus. The team then enlisted help from the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights – a nonpartisan organization that runs the Election Protection programs – for help setting up the command center.

Later this month, the Election Protection Team intends to have an informal discussion about the Election Day experience while also encouraging other students to continue with the project in the future.

About 90 people were trained to be official poll watchers and to head up the command center for southern Arizona. Throughout the day, volunteers answered phone calls from people made to an Election Protection hotline reporting problems at polling locations. Team members were also dispatched to various areas in southern Arizona to investigate reports and to watch the election process.

"I wouldn't say that any of those problems were categorical, but individual snippets," said Kane, who added that the team would contact Pima County or the national Election Protection office with reports of the more serious cases.

The center had received more than 900 calls by 4 p.m. from across the state of Arizona, though the center only handled calls in southern Arizona, she said.

Among the allegations people called in were that voter information was found in several precincts, poll volunteers were giving out wrong information about required identification, certain stations were close to running out of ballots and that ballots were "unsecured" at some locations.

The command center also received several reports of broken optical scanning machines.

Such reports were detailed and updated on a blog that the Election Protection Team frequently updated.

Jen Crutchfield was dispatched to south Tucson where she went to about 10 different polling stations.

Though Crutchfield said she witnessed a number of problems, Crutchfield said she also saw a tremendous amount of excitement surrounding the election.

"I talked to an 87-year-old woman who was so excited that she was able to vote in this election," said the second-year UA law student.

"Some of the people were just excited that we were there. It was amazing to see," Crutchfield said, adding that she spoke to several people who were voting for the first time. "They were happy and receptive that people cared enough that the elections were handled lawfully."