Some Ballot-Punching Machines Balk at Polls

It didn’t count as a major disaster and County Registrar of Voters Al Olson said he believes just about everyone who wanted to managed to vote.

Still he, poll workers and voters around the county weren’t delighted to find themselves wrestling with an annoying mechanical problem Tuesday. About 150 of the county’s 4,800 spanking new $55-apiece ballot-punching machines used in this election refused to work properly.

“They’re spread out all over,” Shirley Deaton, chief deputy registrar of voters, said of the malfunctioning machines.

“We have had a situation where all four devices (in a polling place) were malfunctioning. But nobody should be turned away because the precincts have been instructed to let voters use pens to mark their ballots.”

The machines require ballots to be placed in a slot next to a hole-puncher that slides up and down. The voter pushes down a handle to punch a hole next to a candidate’s name. The machines aren’t supposed to work unless the ballot is inserted properly. But some poll officials complained that the machines also didn’t work when voters did everything right.

Olson said he suspected “probably a few people did not get to vote that wanted to” but if that had occurred, it was rare.

Indeed, some polling places with the most serious problems reported everybody who wanted to had managed to vote.

At the fire station on the corner of Bushard Street and Capetown Lane in Huntington Beach, two of the polling place’s four ballot-punching machines were inoperable when the station opened at 7 a.m, Diane Rumbley, inspector in charge, reported.

And the problems quickly got worse. By the time four replacement machines arrived, all four of the original ballot-punching machines had stopped working. Soon after, one of the new punching machines broke down and by 5:30 p.m. only one of the eight machines was working.

All Voted

Rumbley said everyone had managed to vote--either by waiting until new machines arrived or using the few that were working.

Still, “I’m irate,” she said. “We haven’t had a lot of complaints because not very many people turned out. But what if this had been a bigger election.”

Rumbley said a variety of problems plagued the machines. On some, the handles worked but no holes were punched in the ballots. On others, the voting lever would not depress. On still others, the movable arm that punches the holes would not stop at the right space.

“They’re glorified paper punches,” clerk Genevieve Korsiak said. “And they don’t work. You could do better with a paper punch.”

At La Habra High School, that’s what pollworkers did.

Martha Middleton, an inspector, said two of the ballot machines refused to perforate ballots. But they had improvised, she said, replacing one malfunctioning machine with a paper punch they had on hand.

Executives from Sequoia Pacific Systems, the Exeter, Calif., firm that had a $975,000 contract with Orange County to supply the ballots and punchers, spent the day at the registrar of voters office and were scrambling to find the cause of the malfunction.

Executive Vice President Gordon Soltau said he believed it was caused by voters failing to insert their ballot completely into the slot of the machine, then trying to punch their choice for candidate and so jamming the machines.

He said many states and other California counties were using similar Sequoia machines without any problem. Still, he said: “We haven’t had this problem before so we’re sort of apprehensive about it.”

Times staff writers Jeffrey A.Perlman and Dina Heredia contributed to this story.