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Sandy's Impact Causes Minor Problems In Preparations For General Election

By Cherri Gregg

PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- The impact of Hurricane Sandy has caused some minor hiccups as county elections officials prepare for the November 6th election.

Downed trees and power lines mean less access to polling locations and state offices.

"We lost a couple of days for delivery of machines to polling places," says City Commission Chair Stephanie Singer.

Singer's office usually spends the final days before the election delivering more than 4,000 voter machines, checking polling locations, processing absentee ballot and voter registrations. But Sandy postponed some of that effort and now elections officials are working to get back on track.

"We are working on arranging on not only getting machine trucks to where they need to go," she says, "but working with the landlords of the polling places, which includes the city for most of them to make sure that those locations are open to receive the trucks."

Singer says she is confident that Sandy's aftermath will not have a major impact on election day in the Philadelphia area.

State and county elections officials are assessing damage and power outages to polling places this week and are expected to submit reports Wednesday or Thursday.

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