Voters turned away by glitches: 200 Alameda County precincts encounter problems

By Thomas Peele and Sam Richards

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

California's transition to electronic voting hit glitches on election day as voters were delayed and in some cases turned away from polling places in Alameda and San Diego counties because of malfunctioning machines.

Approximately 200 of Alameda County's 1,096 voting precincts experienced similar encoder problems Tuesday, said Elaine Ginnold, the county's assistant registrar of voters. Voters were turned away at perhaps 25 polling places, she estimated; it wasn't known Thursday how many voters were inconvenienced, she said.

One affected polling place was the fire station on Stoneridge Mall Road in Pleasanton, where voters Tuesday morning were greeted with a handwritten sign that said, "Voting machine broken, please return later."

George Fargis, precinct inspector at the firehouse, said he and his crew turned away about 50 to 100 voters Tuesday morning. "We couldn't tell people when or if they could come back and vote," an irritated Fargis said.

At least four other precincts reported similar problems with the encoders, small machines that take blank voting cards and encode them with information tailored to each voter. The voters the encoded cards into the touch-screen machines and are given party-appropriate ballots. Without the encoded cards, the touch screens are useless.

Fargis said his machine was fixed only because the husband of one of his poll workers also an election worker was nearby and had some computer programming knowledge.

Paper ballots were used as a backup, but there weren't enough Republican voters' ballots available, and GOP voters were asked to return later in the day.

Mark Johnson, a Pleasanton Republican, was incensed he wasn't able to at least fill out a provisional ballot without driving across town, where he was able to vote. He not only called the county registrar of voters, but also vented to county Republican officials.

At the polling place, "they had no clue what to do about things," Johnson said.

Tuesday's election marked the third consecutive election in which Alameda County experienced a problem with its Diebold electronic voting machines, said Kim Alexander, president of the watchdog California Voting Foundation.

"The most acute problems were in Alameda and San Diego," Alexander said. She had urged voters in counties using electronic machines to cast paper ballots instead.

In San Diego, a power surge caused Diebold TSX machines to boot up to Microsoft Windows, and delayed voting at more than 100 precincts for about two hours.

"Other counties didn't have any systemic problems that we know of," said Doug Stone, a spokesman for Secretary of State Kevin Shelley. The secretary's office, Stone said, was still fact finding about the election and would fully investigate any problems with electronic machines.

The office is investigating why Diebold placed uncertified software on machines in the 17 counties that used them in the October recall election.

Four counties San Diego, Solano, Kern and San Joaquin used Diebold TSX machines for the first time Tuesday. The secretary of state allowed their use without full federal certification only after ordering increased security measures last month.

The state received conditional approval from the National Association of Election Directors Voting Systems Board to use the TSX machines last month. That approval came "only in light of the urgent March deadline" and required Diebold to address "anomalies noted in test reports," board chairman Thomas R. Wiley wrote to state elections chief John Mott-Smith.

Ginnold said Thursday that Diebold representatives pledged to install and test new operating software in Alameda County's encoders.

Elizabeth Peterson, one of an estimated 50 to 100 voters turned away from the Stoneridge fire station Tuesday, said she grew up amid the legendary city politics of Chicago. She admitted to harboring suspicions that darker forces than computer glitches were at work.

"Whatever it is, I think it's inexcusable," she said. "I've always voted absentee, and I think I will vote absentee from now on."