DaytonDailyNews.com

CLEVELAND — Sixteen polling locations where earlier voting machine problems caused delays and where waits were an hour or more must stay open an extra 90 minutes, a federal judge ruled late Tuesday.

U.S. District Court Judge Dan A. Polster made the ruling after the Ohio Democratic Party sued Cuyahoga County in an attempt to get the hours extended beyond the scheduled 7:30 p.m. closing time.

The polling places are in Cleveland and the city's eastern suburbs.

Cuyahoga elections chief Michael Vu said that the board was in process of notifying poll workers to continue operating until 9 p.m.

The polling locations were in heavily Democratic Cleveland, Shaker Heights, University Heights, Warrensville Heights, Cleveland Heights and East Cleveland.

The state's most populous county with more than 1 million registered voters was among several in Ohio that earlier reported some delays at polling locations, which were to open at 6:30 a.m.

Vu said earlier that some machines did not work and there were some cases of technicians either not showing up or being unable to get the machines working right away. An unknown number of voters were turned away until about 20 precincts began using paper ballots to be counted by optical scanners.

Polster dismissed the Democrats' request to force the elections board to count those paper ballots Tuesday night because they are regular ballots cast by valid voters. The county says it does not know how many there are and it will not count them until Nov. 28, when elections results are made official.

The party claims the delays disenfranchised voters and requested the extended hour to give those turned away a chance to cast votes for governor and other offices.

The county was ordered to extend hours at a Cleveland polling place in May when that location opened six hours late because three of four poll workers did not show up. It was one of numerous problems during the primary in which results in the Cuyahoga were delayed six days.