Few Problems Reported in Counting the Ballots
The weather helps, and tally system used in March is replaced by simple paper ballots.

By Joel Rubin and Amanda Covarrubias, Los Angeles Times  18 May 2005

This time around, the weather was good and City Clerk Frank Martinez used a different voting system, which meant few problems Tuesday with collecting ballots and counting votes.

In March, election results were delayed several hours because dense fog grounded the helicopters that fly ballots downtown from distant precincts. There were delays in counting ballots and unproved allegations of ballot tampering.

But Martinez said Tuesday night that this election appeared to go off with relatively few glitches.

"There have been no reports of any systemic problems or widespread problems, whatsoever," Martinez said.

Officials, however, were investigating various complaints involving individual polling sites, such as one man who said his dead father's name appeared on the voter's roll and a woman who said she received two absentee ballots.

Because there were fewer snafus Tuesday, the vote count was quicker than in March.

Problems also arose in March with the InkaVote system in which a narrow ballot card is placed in a holder and marked with a special pen. The ballots are then fed into an optical-scanning machine for counting.

But Martinez was concerned that if voters held the special pen at the wrong angle or did not push hard enough, the mark would not be clear. As a precaution, he made the decision to inspect each ballot before it was fed into the scanner.

In place of the InkaVote system, voters Tuesday were handed a simple paper ballot that listed each race or issue and required them to use a marker to fill in an oval next to their choices.