Santa Ana : Computer Fails, Delays Verification of Petitions

The computerized voter registration files of more than 1 million Orange County residents were being reloaded into the main computer at the registrar of voters office Friday after a weeklong shutdown caused by a failure of a memory storage disk, Chief Deputy Registrar Shirley Deaton said.

The computer problem caused county workers to resort to handwritten records for processing new voter registrations and verifying old ones, Deaton said. The breakdown forced a delay in the verification of signatures involving a controversial referendum petition from Newport Beach, she added.

The petition, carrying more than 6,000 signatures, calls for a special election to decide the fate of a disputed Newport Center expansion plan approved by the City Council. The signatures were gathered by Gridlock, a residents group opposed to the plan.

Deaton said most of the verification process has been completed except for a computerized check to see if any signatures appear on the petition more than once. She said the results should be known sometime next week.

Deaton said the computer system should be operating again over the weekend.