20,000 phone legal hot line
NEW YORK — More than 20,000 voters called a nationwide hot line staffed by legal experts this week, organizers said Wednesday.
Ohio, Georgia, California, Pennsylvania, Florida and Maryland produced the most callers, said the organizers, the Election Protection Coalition. The group is made up of legal and civil-rights organizations.
Some coalition members are pressing Maryland courts to extend the deadline for absentee ballots, saying many voters received theirs too late to mail them back by midnight Monday. A Maryland judge denied a request Monday to push the deadline back 24 hours, but coalition members are appealing.
Other common problems included voting machine malfunctions and requests for more or different voter identification than state laws required, the coalition said. The group also noted reports of phone calls misleading or discouraging voters in some places.
The coalition, an outgrowth of the 2000 presidential election dispute, fielded almost 200,000 calls during the 2004 presidential vote.
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