During the presidential primary, voters in various Pennsylvania counties reported leaving polling sites without voting or enduring hours-long waits when machines failed. Their experiences were recounted as part of a case filed by the Pennsylvania conference of the NAACP and other voting rights groups against Pedro A. Cortes, Pennsylvania Secretary of the Commonwealth.
 
Until the court order, polling places wouldn't have been allowed to offer emergency ballots unless all of the machines at a polling place were not operational, according to rules laid out by Cortes. The voting rights case challenged the "100 percent" rule, arguing that voters would suffer irreparable harm if it was not changed.
 
Judge Harvey Bartle III, chief judge of the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, agreed and said protecting "the constitutional right to vote" outweighed the "minimal" harm to counties that now must keep an adequate supply of paper ballots on hand, teach staff when to issue them and tally more paper ballots on Nov. 4. Of the state's 67 counties, 50 use touchscreen voting machines as their primary equipment.
 
Pennsylvania's voting rolls have increased by 400,000 new registrations in advance of Nov. 4, a rise the judge called an "extraordinary" amount that could further test a system strained by the turnout in April.
 
Bartle wrote that "there is a real danger that a significant number of machines will malfunction" in the state and the problems are "likely to cause unacceptably long lines on November 4."