Ballots found out of sync with precincts

Deirdre Newman

Somehow, 264 ballots were cast at Kaiser Elementary School on March 2

in a precinct with 91 registered voters.

For the other precinct represented at Kaiser on election day,

there were only 60 ballots cast out of 681 registered voters.

At a polling place in Newport Beach where three precincts were

represented, 122 ballots were cast for a precinct with no registered

voters and only 29 ballots were cast for a precinct with 400

registered voters. Precincts with no registered voters are typically

in industrial areas.

The problems were caused by poll volunteers bringing up the wrong

ballots on voters’ electronic voting machine screens, said Brett

Rowley, spokesman for the Orange County Registrar of Voters. While it

didn’t matter in some cases because the legislative races were the

same, it did in others.

The registrar’s office is in the midst of going through all the

ballots and identifying close contests to see if they were affected

by the mix-up, Rowley said. On March 30, the registrar will give a

report on the election troubles to the Orange County Board of

Supervisors, he added.

Problems such as this throughout Orange County prompted 35th

District state Sen. Ross Johnson to call for ditching the new,

paperless electric voting machines for the November election, which

is expected to draw larger crowds to the voting booths than the

primary did.

“Democracy is too important to be left to a machine,” Johnson

said. “There were far too many problems in last week’s election to

continue using the electronic voting machines. I don’t want to see

California become the Florida of 2004.”

While he couldn’t speak about the specific polling places, Rowley

said the ballot mix-ups throughout the county were a result of

inadequate volunteer training. The inspectors, or supervisors, at

each polling place were responsible for giving voters access codes

that, when entered into the electronic machines, were supposed to

bring up the right ballots. The inspectors got the access codes by

pulling up the appropriate ballot on electronic boxes they had. But

in some cases, where there were multiple precincts at one polling

place, the inspectors didn’t scroll down far enough on their

electronic boxes to bring up the ballots for the second precinct,

Rowley said.

“There were some folks that weren’t comfortable [with the

equipment],” he said. “What we were trying to get across during the

day, as we were getting these phone calls when the inspectors called

in, was to remind them to scroll.”

In some cases, the voters realized that they got the wrong ballots

and were able to ask for the appropriate ones, Rowley said. But that

was not the case at Kaiser, inspector Carol Hamilton said.

As the inspector, Hamilton was prepared to resolve any problems

that occurred on election day. But none did that she was informed of.

“Nobody complained,” Hamilton said. “I would say about 90% of the

people said, ‘This is a piece of cake.’”

Hamilton said that all of the voting materials that she and the

three volunteers had showed just one precinct.

None of the clerks noticed anything odd about the precinct numbers

either, Hamilton said. She and her crew are veteran volunteers,

having worked together for the past six years, she added.

In Newport Beach, the ballot errors occurred at a polling place at

the Schabarum residence. The precinct represents the Bay View area,

which is one of the unincorporated islands of Costa Mesa, Rowley

said. For this precinct, there were 122 ballots cast with no

registered voters, and for the other precinct, there were only 29

ballots cast for 400 registered voters.

The inspector, Jeanne Schabarum, said there were no balloting

errors as far as she knows.

“That couldn’t possibly be,” Schabarum said. “Those machines saved

our bacon. ... We’re very pleased with everything about them. Very

pleased. Nobody complained.”

Rowley said the registrar’s office would work on training

volunteers better on making sure they are bringing up the right

ballots for the November election.