Voters in grouchy mood at the polls
Technical glitches keep some from casting ballots

Bay Area voters who went to the polls Tuesday to vote in a presidential primary and decide on a number of bond measures said, among other things, that they were getting tired of being faced with debt-producing bond measures on the ballot.

Although voters seemed to be in a good mood, some were unhappy at what they said was little choice in what to vote for.

"I feel like we're pretty much stuck with what's been laid on the plate, both in candidates and propositions," said Berkeley voter Tad Laird as he was about to enter a polling place in the Elmwood district.

Although most early reports said that voting appeared to be going smoothly, in some places there were technical glitches.

An equipment malfunction slowed voting at 200 precincts in Alameda County, and voters may have been turned away at some sites. At 1515 Francisco St. in Berkeley, voters who appeared at 8:10 a.m. were told the voting machines were out of order and, besides, the poll workers had run out of Democratic Party ballots.

Officials blamed the trouble on a newly installed device called a voter card encoder. The size of a laptop computer, it is programmed to make sure voters get the right ballot for their party affiliation when they sign in.

But at about 200 precincts, either it did not work properly or poll workers could not get it to display any data.

Officials were able to fix most of the problems by troubleshooting over the phone. But 25 sites had to resort to paper ballots as a backup to the county's touch-screen voting machines, and some ran out of them.

The problems were not limited to Alameda County. Voters in Maryland, Georgia and Southern California encountered scattered technical problems, largely blamed on human error, as electronic voting machines got their biggest U.S. test so far.

Dozens of machines in California's San Diego County failed to boot up properly, forcing voters to wait until they were fixed or to go to another polling spot to cast paper ballots. When some San Diego poll workers plugged in machines, a screen for the Windows operating system and not the voting program appeared. Officials spent more than two hours getting all machines operating.

The problem, which apparently was triggered by a power fluctuation, affected between 10 and 15 percent of the county's 1,611 precincts, said Mike Workman, a San Diego County spokesman.

Officials said they were unsure how many voters had to leave for work before the problem was fixed.

In San Francisco, officials said all polling places opened on time and were running smoothly.

Voter turnout was average in some places, officials reported, and a bit light in others. In Contra Costa County, clerk-recorder Steve Weir said, "the turnout is a little on the light side." In Marin County voting was "a little lighter than the March primary of 2000," according to election official Madelyn DeJusto.

David Tom, elections manager for San Mateo County, said precinct workers in the county had reported "fairly light'' turnout, and he predicted that it would probably be less than 50 percent by the time polls closed. Still, he said a large number of voters would probably arrive to cast their ballots after work.

"What goes on at the end of the day can be very different,'' said Tom.

In Santa Clara County, election officials expected about 40 to 45 percent of registered voters to cast votes, according to Elections Department spokeswoman Elma Rosas.

"I was kind of hoping that the big turnout we got last time (for the November recall) would have carried over to this election, but, oh well," Rosas said, shrugging. "It's back to normal."

Once the morning rush was over, voters trickled in to polling places in Los Gatos, where many said they turned out for every election, whether there is a movie star on the ballot or not.

Software engineer Anthony Ettinger, 29, said he votes regularly, though many of his peers don't bother to vote at all. In his spare time, Ettinger runs a political Web site itsallpolitics.com.

"The last election (the recall) was a joke," Ettinger said. "There's a war going on, and I want to know the environmental politics of the candidates this is important stuff to me. I'm not going to come out and vote for some movie star just because he's popular."

In Walnut Creek, Shelly Malter, 46, a parent and a volunteer, said, "I think there is a lot of interest this election because of the Bush factor and Schwarzenegger.

"I always take an interest in politics and vote every year, but I started earlier this year because I want someone who can come in there and beat Bush. He is so out of touch it is mind boggling. The war absolutely is a huge factor. He has just blown it on the whole thing."

The main thing that appeared to irk voters was Proposition 57, the $15 billion bond measure that some voters called a bailout.

Laird, the Berkeley voter, criticized Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger for "giving away $4 billion in the vehicle license fee (repeal) and putting our kids $15 billion in debt."

In San Francisco, Patricia Moreno, emerging from a polling place in the Tenderloin, said, "I wasn't terribly thrilled about the bond measures. I didn't like the bailout. It's just getting us all more and more in debt."

On the Peninsula, sentiments about the bond issues were similar.

Mike Edwards, an employee for San Mateo County, said he had voted against the two state bond measures.

"They need to find a better way to get out of debt instead of just passing another bond measure," said Edwards, 28. "Ten years from now, we're going to be doing the same thing.''

There was at least one fan of the bonds. Sean Harper, an 18-year-old student at the College of San Mateo, voting in his second election Tuesday, said he had decided to vote for the bond measures after witnessing firsthand the cuts in education.

"The cuts are real noticeable," Harper said. "There aren't enough materials or books. The teachers even have to bring and buy their own chalk.''

Harper said he hoped his vote would help.

"I was just making a contribution to education," he said, "and I hope it can undo some of the damage that's been done in the past."

Chronicle staff writers Rick Del Vecchio, Maria Alicia Gaura, Ilene Lelchuk, C.W. Nevius, Michael Taylor and Diana Walsh, and the Associated Press contributed to this report.