Electronic voting glitches abound

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

 

OAKLAND - Voting equipment in at least 43 polling places around Alameda County failed for parts of the morning, requiring many voters to use paper ballots and when those ran out making it hard for some to vote at all.

Some voters wondered if the equipment problems would skew the vote, particularly because it seemed in several polling places that paper ballots for Republicans ran out much sooner than those for Democrats.

Problems at most polls were fixed and polls reopened by 11 a.m. or noon, said county registrar of voters Brad Clark. But concern was widespread.

"There wasn't any one problem," said assistant county voter registrar Elaine Ginnold. "It was a collection of different things."

The glitches centered on the machines that encode the cards voters in touch-screen machines to cast their ballots, Ginnold said. Poll workers were unfamiliar with the equipment and when screens froze or machines needed to be recharged or linked with their memory cards, the poll workers had to wait for help by telephone from county headquarters in downtown Oakland.

"These are exactly the kind of problems that are continuing to crop up every time we have an election with an electronic voting system," said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit watchdog group in Davis.

"This is the third election with electronic machines in Alameda (County), and it is the third time they are having these problems," she said.

"We had encouraged the state and the counties to have paper backups available. We have been hearing of problems all day across the state," she said.

Problems also arose in San Joaquin and San Diego counties, which are using the controversial Diebold TSX machines for the first time. Alameda County uses the Diebold TS machine, a slightly older model.

Ohio-based Diebold has taken heavy criticism in California since Secretary of State investigators found that the company installed uncertified software on machines in each county that used its equipment in the October recall election. Diebold could be banned from selling its election equipment in the state.

The machines that failed encode the voting cards with party affiliation and polling location, and touch-screen voting cannot proceed if the cards are not coded.

Each precinct countywide had 25 to 50 provisional ballots on hand for Democrats and Republicans combined, Clark said. He said election officials delivered additional ballots to 43 precincts around the county this morning but voters were turned away in the meanwhile.

Some machines were down for two or three hours.

When registered Republican Elizabeth Peterson arrived to vote at the fire station on Stoneridge Mall Road in Pleasanton, she was greeted with a hand-written sign that read "Voting machine broken, please return later."

Because Democratic presidential hopefuls were the stars of the primary, polling places each received only a handful of Republican provisional ballots. Peterson's originally got just 10.

"A lot of the taxes are going to get fewer "no" votes than they should have gotten because Republicans weren't able to vote; it's very unfair," said Bob Hucker, another Pleasanton voter. "No Republican cares if they get to vote in the Republican primary, but they do care about these local taxes."

George Fargis, precinct inspector at the firehouse, said he and his crew turned away 50 to 100 voters because the encoder was broken.

"We couldn't tell people when or if they could come back and vote," an irritated Fargis said.

Fargis said at least four other precincts in Pleasanton reported similar problems. He said poll workers were told expressly not to test the machines before polls opened at 7 a.m.

Code problems of another sort plagued some San Ramon voters who found their polling place was inside a gated community: There were no instructions telling voters how to get in. Eventually, voter John Larsen said, he positioned his car strategically by the residents' entrance and waited until he could slip through the gate behind another car.

Larsen voted without incident, but then returned to complain. Poll monitors told him an access code was posted near the gate, he said, but they admitted other voters had had difficulty seeing the sign and getting in.

Sign or no sign, Larsen said: "I just don't think voting booths belong behind a gate."

By 4:45 p.m., when Oliver Gruter went to cast his ballot, there was a sign with the code, and Gruter punched it in to no avail. He too slipped behind a resident's car.

"Because this was what we hoped to be an all-electronic election we didn't have as many provisional ballots and envelopes at each of the polling places," said Piedmont City Clerk Ann Swift. "We had to not only get a new piece of equipment but get more provisional supplies as a back-up."

Vicki Diaz was one of several voters who returned to Piedmont's Veterans Hall three times to cast her ballot. At her first visit after she ped off her children at school, there were no Republican provisional ballots. When she returned a little before 10 a.m., there were no envelopes for the provisional ballots. Diaz returned a third time at about 2 p.m. and voted.

Mark Johnson of Pleasanton, another Republican voter, was incensed he had to drive across town to Hart Middle School to find and fill out a provisional ballot. He had tried not only the county registrar of voters, but county Republican officials, to vent his anger.

"They had no clue what to do about things," Johnson said.
Staff writers Bruce Gerstman, Thomas Peele, Sam Richards, Taunya English, Lisa Coffey Mahoney and Sandy Kleffman contributed to this story.