Baseball Voting Scandal Is Full of Holes

In a week of primary elections, it appeared to be an election scandal of another kind.

An employee of The Times, attending Wednesday night’s game between the Angels and New York Yankees at Anaheim Stadium, discovered that poor perforating in certain areas of the All-Star ballot made it impossible to punch out votes.

Several dozen of the suspect ballots were brought to The Times sports department Wednesday and resisted everything but the sharpest of jabs, which tended to mangle them to the point where they might not have survived the computer that does the counting.

A wide-spread problem? An isolated batch of bad ballots?

Apparently the latter.

A spokesman in Commissioner Peter Ueberroth’s office said there have been no complaints, that hundreds of thousands of votes have already been cast, that the preliminary standings will be announced Monday and that this was the first he has heard of any problem.

Similarly, public relations representatives of the Angels, Dodgers, San Diego Padres and San Francisco Giants, when contacted Thursday, said that they have received no complaints from fans and were unaware of any problem.

In fact, Corky Lippert, who handles the Angels’ All-Star operation, tested some Anaheim Stadium ballots at The Times’ request Thursday and reported that she had no problem making her point.

The conclusion: Poor perforation may exist, but not in proliferation.