Thread by @IndivisibleMem

Election trouble in Shelby County, thread...these are our experiences on the first day of EV...we're still trying to figure out what happened.

Within 20 minutes of polls opening in Shelby County we learned that Harvest Church in Bartlett's machines weren't working and they told people to leave...eventually they got one back up after people had already left (1)

Panic ensued as more reports came in of polling places with downed machines from Memphis to Collierville. We believe a large number of the ipad's used to verify voters before they can vote did not get an important update and so they were not connecting to the server (2)

Some polling places gave up on the ipads and they went straight to paper ballots that could be verified later (these are not provisional ballots). Some polling places resorted to calling the election commission to verify each voter over the phone. (3)

Some polling places got an ipad or two to update and they began processing that way...and allowing people to vote. All of this made the lines get longer and longer as the day went on (4)

Interestingly, though not surprising, the biggest republican location--New Bethel Church in Germantown had no problems. Mississippi Boulevard and other city-central locations continue to have very long lines and few machines working. (5)

As we were getting a sense for what was happening on the ground, @Shelbydem chairman Strong went to election commission ops center to find out more info. He suggested wait if you can, come back if you can't wait, don't lose hope. (6)

Many people left which is concerning. But many more waited for an hour, sometimes more just to get to the front of the line--MANY reports from regular voters that there "was an issue with their registration" thankfully those we heard from demanded it be addressed (7)

We were already concerned about this--even if things had gone well. There were tens of thousands of unprocessed registration forms as of last week. Tues night elect. comm. mtg we learned almost 1/2 were "invalid" b/c illegible, no ss#, felony box not checked, bad address, etc (8)

The plan was if they weren't processed, poll workers would have lists to check & they could correct errors on registration form. This sounded like a terribly inefficient & problematic process to begin with. Problems w/ check in make it seem very unlikely this was handled well (9)

We do not know how many new registrants were able to fix their deficient applications today, we hope to find out more. Perhaps the MOST concerning issue was discovered later this afternoon when....(10)

We received reports that at least two ballots--one at New Bethel in Germantown and one at Bellevue Frayser--listed the governor candidates as follows: Bill Lee, ALL the independents, and THEN @KarlFDean at the bottom (11)

One of these ballots was the "large print" version one was the regular version of the electronic ballot. We don't know what the hell is up with that. We have encouraged EVERYONE to report problems to 855-844-VOTE. (12)

It has become clear from our experiences in Shelby Co that we need automatic voter registration, same-day registration, and automatic restoration of voting rights for felons. Our election commission simply cannot do their job under a mountain paperwork from a county this big (13)

Things are not okay, y'all. We want to thank all of our members that reported problems, went to polls to help, and are serving as poll watchers. We gotta flip this state so we can affect real change and protect our elections. keep on resisting.

@NashvilleResist please spread far and wide. We're still working.

Update: a third ballot with @KarlFDean below all the independents has been reported at Mississippi Boulevard Church.

Update: ballot choices on 3 controversial referenda that we oppose are listed as “for” or “against even tho all sample ballots said “yes” or “no” #voterconfusion! shelbyvote.com/sites/default/…