New, $2-Million Vote-Tallying System Faces Election Day Test

Kitty, a wayward feline adopted by county workers, prowled around the huge elections department warehouse in Santa Ana where a new, $2-million vote-tallying system was being tested for today’s school board, service district and city contests.

Mewing loudly, Kitty seemed more nervous about the new equipment as it whined and whirred than was Registrar of Voters Al Olson.

He confidently predicted a quick, smooth tabulation despite vivid memories of 1980 when problems with the debut of the previous $1.5-million vote-counting machinery caused a record four-day delay in the official results and a threat by state officials to shut down the county’s system.

“The new system can process ballots faster than they arrive to be counted,” Olson said. “The biggest problem we may encounter is having to stand around and wait for ballots.”

Olson predicted that the results will be in by 12:30 a.m., compared to 3:30 a.m. in a similar election two years ago.

System on Trial

So while the election will determine the fate of many candidates and ballot measures, the fate of $2 million worth of spanking new, state-of-the-art, high-tech gear also hangs in the balance.

When it comes to vote counting, tempers are short among members of the county Board of Supervisors. The previous system, marketed by Martel Systems Inc. of Costa Mesa, was chosen over the objections of county staff and specially hired consultants after a heated bidding war that involved campaign contributions to supervisors and the hiring of board aides as company lobbyists. The Martel system had never been used in any election. Three grand juries and the secretary of state have all investigated the county’s vote-counting problems. Nobody wants to go through another round of finger-pointing and blame-tossing.

But Olson cautioned that “this election is not really a good test--we’ll know better in June if the system is as good as we think it is.”

Light Load Expected

The low 12% turnout expected and a trim list of ballot choices makes today’s election too “lightweight” for a true test of the new system’s capabilities, Olson said.

Replacing a system only five years old, the new machinery includes 13,500 ballot-punching devices that cost $55 each, purchased from the Palo Alto-based Sequoia Pacific Co., which also supplied 24 electronic card readers that each process about 1,000 ballots per minute. Sequoia Pacific lost a hard-fought lobbying effort for the contract to supply the rest of the computer system, which went to Irvine-based DFM Inc.

Previously, voters marked ballots by pen.

The new ballot device holds a paper ballot next to a hole-puncher that slides up and down a track. The hole-puncher won’t work unless it’s aligned with a ballot choice, thus reducing chances for mis-marking. Voters are supposed to remember to remove the ballot and turn it over and reinsert it in the device in order to complete the reverse side. Olson doesn’t think voters will have trouble with the new devices. They are imprinted with instructions in English and in Spanish. Demonstrations will be available at each polling place.

As in previous elections, ballots will be taken under armed guard from polling places to 19 collection centers throughout the county, where they will be transferred to trucks that arrive sporadically through the evening from Olson’s Santa Ana warehouse.

The ballots will then be placed in electronic card-readers connected by cable to minicomputers. The minicomputers will transfer data to a bigger, mainframe computer that will store the results and put them in a readable format. Printouts will be delivered by high-speed electronic printers located both at Olson’s office and near the pressroom at the county Hall of Administration.

With the new system, the county also got computerized information retrieval, known as an elections management system, that allows on-screen display of registration data about individuals or groups of voters.

Previous tallying involved additional, time-consuming steps, such as the use of many small machines to transfer results from card readers onto magnetic tapes. The tapes were then transported from Olson’s office to the county’s data-processing center a few miles away. Part of the 1980 disaster involved the failure of computers at the data processing center to accept information from the magnetic tapes.

The Martel equipment currently sits locked away in a corner of Olson’s warehouse, waiting for purchase by anyone willing to pay for it. However, no price has been set yet by the county General Services Administration.