BUENA PARK

Council to Complain to Registrar About Long Wait on Election Night

City Council members are unhappy about the long wait candidates suffered through on election night as ballots were being counted and intend to send a letter of complaint next week to the Orange County registrar of voters.

“I think I speak for the whole city when I say that this was ridiculous,” Mayor Donald L. Bone said. “I want them to find some other delivery system that doesn’t have us all up until 4:30 in the morning.”

City Clerk Alcene M. Cain said that she had not been told that the Buena Park Police Department had been chosen as a central collection point for ballots from other northern Orange County cities--a change from previous years.

“I thought it was just the collection point for Buena Park,” she said. “I was surprised.”

So were the eight council candidates, who were attending election night parties throughout the city.

“Other cities were getting their fourth and fifth run-throughs and we were still on our second count,” Councilman Arthur C. Brown said.

Party-goers ended up roaming from room to room, repeatedly calling the registrar’s office and getting more and more frustrated, he said.

Buena Park’s absentee ballot count, taken early in the evening, did not change until well after midnight, Cain said. In the 1992 presidential election, Cain said, council election results were in before midnight.

“I’m sure the registrar experiments with different delivery methods from election to election,” Bone said. “We just want to let them know that this method did not work.”

Copies of the council’s letter, which will ask for an explanation, will be sent to the Board of Supervisors, Bone said.