A small blot on InkaVote’s rollout

When Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa cast his ballot early Tuesday, an electronic scanner spit it right back: “Ballot alert,” declared the machine’s printed message.

The mayor apparently had “overvoted” by punching too many bubbles on his ballot. He went back into the booth and filled out his choices again.

For Villaraigosa, Los Angeles County’s new $25-million InkaVote Plus machines, which use an optical scanner to check ballots for errors, worked like a charm.

“It shows that we’re protecting people’s vote the way they want to cast it,” said county Registrar Conny McCormack.

Elsewhere around the county, however, voters and poll workers reported a slew of minor glitches with the new scanning system, placed for the first time in all of the county’s 5,028 precincts. Some machines didn’t work properly; others simply didn’t work.

One Los Angeles County poll worker said that the new scanners used at his polling station jammed up with dozens of ballots. But he said that workers were able to retrieve all of them and that each would be counted.

“The integrity of the ballots was maintained,” said the poll worker, who did not want to be identified. “My concern is that this is happening across the district.”

Representatives for InkaVote could not be reached for comment.

Based on the number of ballots thrown out in previous elections because of mistakes, McCormack estimated that 2% to 3% of ballots cast in the county were recast because of glitches.

In some cases, the scanners worked too well.

At the Theresa Lindsay Senior Center in South Los Angeles, long lines formed when about half of the roughly 130 voters who cast ballots by early afternoon were forced to vote a second time.

“We had all the booths filled with voters, and when they came to turn in their ballots, almost all of them had a problem,” said Teresa Jackson, a volunteer poll inspector. Once poll workers educated voters about being more careful with the new system, things ran more smoothly, Jackson said.

San Francisco voters have been using so-called optical scanning technology for the last six years, said elections director John Arntz, adding that the city experienced no major glitches in voting Tuesday.

Sacramento County, which began using an optical scanning system in November 2004, also reported no major problems.

“We’re pretty much gliding under the radar,” said Brad Buyse, campaign services manager for the Sacramento County elections office. “Granted, for many counties in the state this is their first election with the new voting system. There will be growing pains and learning curves. It is worth it.”

Meanwhile, some Orange County voters encountered more serious problems at the polls when they found that many electronic voting machines were not working.

Some voted by paper ballot, while others were asked to return later to vote when the machines were repaired.

In Irvine, Rhona Kershnar, a grade school reading specialist, was unable to vote when her machine malfunctioned.

After about 20 minutes, Kershnar said she left for work. “I had to go to my class, so I didn’t have the luxury of waiting around to see if the system was going to be fixed,” she said, adding that the experience was “upsetting.”

“The democratic process wasn’t working,” Kershnar said. “A lot of us have been discussing the possibilities of our vote not counting anyway. This is our worst nightmare come true.”

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valerie.reitman@latimes.com

amanda.covarrubias@latimes. com

Times staff writers Tami Abdollah, Maria L. LaGanga, David Reyes, David McKibben and Ashley Surdin contributed to this report.