Election officials say problems minimal

By: GIG CONAUGHTON - Staff Writer

County officials said Wednesday that they do not think significant numbers of people were deprived of their right to vote Tuesday when early computer problems forced poll workers to turn some voters away in San Diego County's first election with electronic ballots.

At the same time, the secretary of state's office said it was reviewing San Diego County's problems, County Supervisor Bill Horn repeated his call for an immediate investigation, and a few voters voiced complaints.

"It was a pain. It was a total pain," former Vista Mayor Ed Estes said Wednesday.

Estes, who lives and votes in Vista but works and teaches an evening class in San Diego, said he showed up early to his polling place before heading south, only to be told by his neighbors they couldn't get the machines working and he could not vote.

"I thought they were joking," said Estes, who voted later at the registrar's office before racing to class. "It was just a frustrating experience."

Election officials think a mysterious power drain caused poll workers to be presented with an unfamiliar computer screen that barred them from programming the "smart cards" voters needed to use the new "touch screen" machines.

County spokesman Mike Workman said nearly all of the county's 1,611 polls were affected. But he said most of the problems were fixed quickly, and he said that the number of voters turned away was "in the hundreds, not thousands." About 368,000 voters cast ballots according to rough estimates by election officials.

Workman said 55 percent of the polls fixed their problems and opened on time at 7 a.m. By 7:15 a.m. nearly 75 percent of the polls were open, and by 8 a.m., 89.4 percent were open. A handful of precincts were unable to open until 10 a.m., and one poll in El Cajon didn't open until nearly 11 a.m., he said.

Tuesday was San Diego County's first experience with electronic voting.

State and federal officials ordered counties to replace punch card systems by this year's elections after the disputed 2000 presidential elections in Florida. San Diego County supervisors voted in December to buy 10,200 electronic voting machines from Diebold Systems Inc. for $31 million.

County officials said voters who couldn't vote at their polling places Tuesday morning were directed to other nearby polls, to the registrar's San Diego office, or asked to return later in the day.

Workman said indications Wednesday were that those measures worked for most voters. He said county officials received "no" calls from angry voters Wednesday saying they had not been able to vote.

Still, County Supervisor Bill Horn repeated his call for an immediate and full investigation into the problems, which he believed may have been caused by insufficient training of poll workers.

"This shouldn't have happened," Horn said. "It sounds to me like this was an overall human error. I don't want this happening again in November."

Horn said he was particularly worried that people who live here but work outside the county would have been robbed of their ability to vote if they were turned away Tuesday morning, and that close elections could have been affected.

Horn, who said Tuesday that "heads should roll," if an investigation showed poll workers were insufficiently trained, added that County Chief Administrative Officer Walt Ekard had not returned his phone calls about the issue.

Ekard called Horn's demand for an investigation "grandstanding" on Wednesday.

"He knows as well as I do that I was working on this at 6 a.m. Tuesday, and that I don't need a directive to address this," Ekard said. "I'll have a review on their desks before he can get his request in."

Meanwhile, state officials said they were reviewing San Diego County's problems.

Doug Stone, spokesman for California Secretary of State Kevin Shelley, said the secretary's office was still in a "fact-finding" mode Wednesday and had no further comment.

Contact staff writer Gig Conaughton at (760) 739-6696 or gconaughton@nctimes.com.