A Long Day, Few Voters, but Restful

Like nervous party-givers waiting for their first guests to arrive, Rita Gallaher and her three election day co-workers quickly hid their needlepoint and newspapers when they saw a person coming up the driveway Tuesday.

“Oh, we thought you were a voter,” said a deflated Gallaher as she came out to greet a reporter. By mid-afternoon, only 25 of her precinct’s 1,104 registered voters had cast ballots.

“That’s disgusting,” said the Irvine homemaker and one-time school board candidate, shaking her head at the figures. “It just blows my mind that most people don’t realize that local elections are as important or more important than the national election.”

Still, Gallaher, like most precinct workers around the county, was good-humored about the long hours with little to do. Many people amused themselves by engaging in “a certain amount of gossip,” as one well-heeled Santa Ana woman put it, eating lunch at 10:30 a.m. or working on some long-neglected hobby.

“It’s a kick-back kind of a day,” said Carole Ann Wall, in her Huntington Beach living room-turned-polling place, while writing and addressing Christmas cards. Having seen only 41 of her precinct’s 1,100 voters, the newsletter publisher mused: “It’s kind of neat to do nothing all day.”

Wall’s partners in boredom included her daughter, Cathleen, an accountant who spent her “down-time” etching glass, and Phyllis Gettig, a graphic artist who reminisced about the long election lines of the Mayor Daly era in Chicago where she lived 15 years ago.

Even county voter officials, who predicted a meager 12% turnout Tuesday morning, were sympathetic to the plight of election workers.

“It’s going to be a long day for them, I’m afraid,” said Ruth Reinert, a supervisor at the registrar’s office in Santa Ana.

Elsewhere around the county, poll workers reported a sprinkling of voters throughout the day. In the area known as Little Saigon in Westminster, Vietnamese voters, like the rest of the Orange County electorate, seemed to mostly stay home.

In Garden Grove, at a school on Ward Street, an election worker said that only 10 people had voted by 2 p.m.

And at Fire Station No. 4 in Santa Ana, it was business as usual--that is, for the firefighters.

Fire trucks backing into the station didn’t have to worry about hitting anybody because there was no one in or near the voting booths. Even the district inspectors were wandering around outside on the sidewalk, taking in some sunshine.

“It’s such a long day,” sighed election inspector Rosalie McCuistion, though the clock read only 11:30 a.m.

In Laguna Beach, Winn Todd, 78, passed the time with a crossword puzzle in poll inspector Caroline Clark’s garage. She, too, was let down that only 33 of the 1,138 registered voters in her precinct had showed up by midday, though the total had risen to 49 by 7 p.m.

“I’m sorry people are inclined to be apathetic,” said Todd, who was born in Chile and came to the United States when she was 13 years old. “It’s a shame because it’s a privilege being an American.”

“It’s a waste of taxpayer’s money,” chimed in one of Todd’s co-workers, rising from her rattan deck chair to stretch her legs. “People come out if it’s Proposition 13 or the President, but for school board, nothing.”

“Oh, oh, it’s a live one,” squealed Clark as a woman appeared in her garage to cast her ballot.

But within minutes, it was back to the puzzles, chips and dip.

The hidden bonus for Clark, apart from the $35 pay and chance to chat with neighbors, was discovering that the brown plastic curtains that hung down from the cardboard voting booths were actually large, trash bags.

“I’ve got some ivy to trim back, Clark said. “They’ll be great to put the ivy in.”

Despite Tuesday’s light turnout and a 15-hour day, most precinct workers said they would do it again next year.

“No way would I quit,” said Irvine’s Gallaher. “I get to tell people their slips are showing and their buttons are opened.”