Few problems reported in area despite record turnout (CA)
Mercury News. November 4, 2008. By Karen de Sá and Lisa Fernandez

Record-high voting in the Bay Area on Tuesday mostly defied predictions of unwieldy waits and overwhelmed polls. But in Santa Clara County, concerns about touch-screen voting machines will likely increase following significant malfunctions.

Fifty-seven of the county's Sequoia Voting Systems machines failed on Election Day, resulting in hourslong delays before replacements arrived. State officials decertified electronic machines for widespread use in California last year amid reliability concerns; on Tuesday, each of the county's 785 polling places was equipped with a single machine for use by the disabled.

"We've had technical problems before, but we haven't had to resort to getting a replacement out or leaving a polling place without a machine at all," said election office spokesman Matt Moreles. He noted that voting at the affected precincts continued on paper ballots.

California Voter Foundation president Kim Alexander called the glitch "concerning" and said it marred an otherwise largely problem-free election statewide. "It underscores the ongoing challenges we face in California attempting to implement computerized voting," she said. "If Santa Clara County were still using touch screens as its primary election system, you bet it would have been a huge problem."

Loose printer connections, as well as dead batteries and broken screens, caused the failures.

Long lines and scattered snags surfaced across the Bay Area on Election Day, with an expected record number of voters anxious to cast ballots.

From San Jose to Oakland, poll workers were greeted by a steady stream of voters. Some problems emerged, but the overall mood was one of excitement.

In Santa Cruz, police Capt. Steve Clark said overnight vandals filled the door locks of two polling places with glue, delaying voting by an hour, and also tagged an apartment building and church with "obscene language denouncing both candidates." In addition, the local Democratic campaign headquarters had broken windows Tuesday morning.

But in Santa Clara County, no criminal activity was reported, though registrar of voters spokeswoman Elma Rosas said she heard some vague complaints of people lobbying voters too close to a polling station.

Election officials, predicting that turnout could reach levels not seen since 1968, printed extra ballots to avoid shortages, and a public service campaign urged residents to vote early by mail or at the San Jose elections office. More than 40 percent of eligible voters had already voted before Election Day countywide.

"Today, it's been a small group of people, but constant," Rosas said.

Pressure to get it right grew before Election Day, with more than 100,000 new voters registering in the nine months between the February primary and Tuesday's election. In the days leading up to the election, hundreds of people a day streamed into the county's Berger Drive elections office to vote, some waiting in line for more than an hour.

But the picture Tuesday morning was calm.

"I can't believe how dead it is," said Diane Clewett, 69, a San Jose poll worker. "It was a zoo the last four days. Maybe everyone has voted already."

She said waits were five minutes or less. Many voters were simply arriving to off their mail-in ballots.

Despite overall good marks, individuals had gripes. The Rev. Ben Daniel, pastor of Foothill Presbyterian Church in East San Jose, said he was voting at a school in the Mayfair district Tuesday morning when a Spanish-speaking citizen was confused about how to use a provisional ballot.

"No one working the polls spoke Spanish," he said. "That seems like something of an oversight to me."

Daniel said a poll worker called elections headquarters to request a translator.

Kay Gutknecht, 58, who works at Stanford Hospital, said she found her poll workers at Lenzen Avenue in San Jose to be generally "incompetent," giving her conflicting answers on whether she could vote provisionally and whether she had to sign a roster. She did her own research and demanded a call to election headquarters to sort things out.

"Had I not been someone who reads everything, my vote wouldn't have been counted," she said.

Rosas acknowledged that provisional ballots, which are given to voters who do not appear on precinct rosters for some reason, take more research and more time to count and verify. But they are counted, she promised, saying that by law, election officials have 28 days to certify an election.

Mercury News Staff Writers Gary Richards, Karen Borchers, Bruce Newman, Mark Gomez and Gary Reyes and Bay Area News Group Staff Writers Angela Hill and William Brand contributed to this report.