Meet the Prince George’s woman who had to return 3 times to vote

Kristina Toliver left and returned to the Robert J. DiPietro Community Center three times on Election Day before she finally cast her ballot. But the 48-year-old Prince George’s County resident isn’t entirely sure her vote went through.

Voters stood in long lines at the Laurel polling location — some as long as three hours — waiting to cast their ballots. Many left before doing so. One woman reportedly fainted.

A shortage of paper ballots and other issues at the DiPietro Community Center contributed to the logjam, voters said. At some point Tuesday, the Prince George’s County Board of Elections informed voters that “an additional ballot scanner is currently being expedited to the polling location.”

The NAACP and League of Women Voters asked a court to order the community center to stay open until midnight, but a judge rejected the request.

On Toliver’s first trip to the polls, she had to leave to make it to a work meeting. She also ran out of time on her second try, she said. But, before she left, an election worker gave her a pass that would allow her to skip the line if she returned.

On her third trip Toliver voted electronically because the line was shorter, she said. But then she spent almost two hours waiting to feed her printed ballot into the electronic voting machine. (Voters can mark their ballots electronically and print a physical ballot with their selections to feed into a scanner.)

The scanner jammed three times while she waited, Toliver said, estimating that one of the malfunctions took 30 minutes to fix. Poll workers eventually told voters to fold their ballots and put them in a drawer at the base of the scanner, Toliver said.

“So I asked, ‘Well, how will I know that my vote gets counted? What separates these that didn’t get scanned from the ones that did get scanned?’” she said.

She said she was told elections officials would compare those who checked in at the polling location with the ballots cast.

“So everybody else whose ballots weren’t scanned, who also checked in, those were the people whose votes still needed to be counted once they got to the election headquarters, is what was explained to me,” Toliver said.

When voters started folding their ballots and submitting them that way, Toliver said, the line moved much faster.

“That’s really what took the longest was the paper ballots, ’cause you know, they have like five pages they had to scan,” she said, adding that she plans to check whether her vote went through.

“I never got a slip, but I cast my ballot and I put it in the ballot box,” Toliver said. “So I’m hoping my vote was counted.”

A spokesperson for the Prince George’s County Board of Elections did not respond to The Banner’s questions about Toliver’s experience.

Nikki Tyree, the executive director of the League of Women Voters of Maryland, said she understands the judge’s decision. She said the league does not intend to appeal.

“Preliminary numbers are telling us that we saw a massive amount of voter turnout, which is a great thing, but what we don’t like to see is voters in line because machines are breaking or there’s not enough ballots or there’s not enough materials,” Tyree said. “And that was something that we kept running into at multiple locations.”

The Banner reported Tuesday on issues at other polling locations, including Brandywine Elementary School, which did not have the correct ballots. The issue was corrected, according to a county board of elections administrator.