Getting Out Vote Proves Major Task : Encino: Voters find locked doors at a polling place on Ventura Boulevard. Officials set up shop outside.

For just one strange, chaotic minute, Michael Verona thought he was back in Rome, sweating out the lunacy of yet another big election--Italian style.

But this was the Valley, a good 6,000 miles from the Eternal City. Then why were irate voters standing in the street outside the polling place on Ventura Boulevard? Why were people pacing back and forth in furious circles, waving their hands in wild gestures--everyone talking at once, nobody listening to a word?

On Election Day morning in Encino, something funny happened at this voting forum: They forgot to open.

Following a misunderstanding, the owners of a car and body shop where the voting was supposed to take place didn’t show up until after 9 a.m. So, for two hours, voting inspector Yolanda Mondello and her three assistants--including Verona--conducted business on the street outside.

“It was a comedy of errors,” said Mondello, a local manicurist. “People were angry. They stamped their feet. They kicked and screamed. They said things like ‘This is America. These things don’t happen here.’ ”

Mondello and her volunteer staff members showed up at 6:30 a.m. to find only locked doors at Encino Motors and Body Paint. Within minutes, harried voters began to arrive.

Instead of private polling booths and an orderly opportunity to cast their vote in the runoff for Los Angeles mayor, they found workers with their hands thrown into the air.

As would-be voters squawked, Mondello rushed to a nearby pay phone to call her supervisors: “I told them what had happened and they asked if people were panicking. I said, ‘Oh, yes.’ And they said, ‘Oh. no.’ ”

Back at the polling place, a disagreement developed over whether the poll workers could set up shop in the street. They checked their bible--the precinct officers’ digest--and made a decision on the spot.

“The rules were clear,” Mondello said. “If the chosen polling place was unavailable, we had the right to make up another. So we set up shop right there on the street.”

Carole Anne Chizever, a deputy district attorney who lives in the area, said she waited more than 40 minutes at the spot while officials decided what to do.

“I was furious,” she said. “I saw at least five people walk away. This is a close election. I don’t know if those people are going to come back.”

As confused voters milled about, the polling place workers registered names while sitting on a red-bricked stoop outside the shop, then directed them to make their choices as best they could.

Some voters stormed off, refusing to wait, saying they were being docked pay from their jobs to do their civic voting duty.

“One lady who worked for the district attorney’s office said she was going to complain to every power on high who would listen to her,” Mondello said. “Whew, was she mad.”

Those who stayed voted on stools, water coolers, on each others’ laps. Said Verona: “It was a very informal way of doing something that people thought should be very formalized.”

In all, 15 people voted on the street. Finally, the shop opened at 9 a.m. and the voting circus moved indoors. There, another three score or so voted on couches and a makeshift nook in the wall until the official cardboard polling booths arrived shortly before 1 p.m.

Said Mondello: “We set up inside and told people, ‘Go ahead! Vote!’ ”

Still, the accusations flew.

“Some people were intent on turning a pimple into a brain tumor,” Verona said. “One guy said it was a big plot pulled off by the Woo people to sabotage the Riordan vote in the Valley. We heard everything.”

The poll workers handled the “organized disorder” the best way they knew how: They handed out free doughnuts.

“This certainly wasn’t Rome,” Verona said. “Italians have this wonderful sense of humor. Something goes wrong, they sing opera. These people were singing nothing but complaints.”

Verona, a drama coach who once played on the television serial “Days of Our Lives,” said the scene took him back to his soap opera days.

“I couldn’t tell if it was ‘As the Stomach Turns’ or ‘Daze of Our Lives,’ ” he said. “But, let me tell you, it was wild.”