On October 29, U.S. District Court Judge Harvey Bartle, a Bush Sr. appointee, issued an injunction, requiring Pennsylvania to furnish emergency paper ballots to any precinct at which at least half the electronic vote-counting machines have broken down. NAACP v Cortes, 08-cv-5048.

The state’s position had been that it would only provide such paper ballots to precincts in which all the machines had ceased to work. The decision says, “Some waiting in line, of course, is inevitable and must be expected. One must always choose between and among a number of candidates for different offices listed on the ballot and often, as in this election, there are questions to be read and considered. All of this takes time. Nonetheless, there can come a point when the burden of standing in a queue ceases to be an inconvenience or annoyance and becomes a constitutional violation because it, in effect, denies a person the right to exercise his or her franchise.” Thanks to Rick Hasen’s ElectionLawBlog for this news.