Poll Workers Say It’s a Wonder They Elect to Do Job

There was the polling place in a Glassell Park recreation center where the voting inspector kept getting hit on the head with an errant basketball.

Or the polling place in a Sherman Oaks elementary school that was moved in the middle of Election Day to make way for a play.

And there was the polling place in Rancho Palos Verdes that was staffed by three volunteers who assisted only five voters in 15 hours.

These were among the many Election Day horror stories recited by some of the nearly 350 polling volunteers who attended a special City Hall hearing Wednesday.

Polling place snafus have become so notorious that they prompted city officials to call a hearing for the first time in hopes of devising solutions.

For elected officials who sat through the three-hour meeting, it was an eye-opening lesson on how democracy works--and often doesn’t work--in the real world.

“It’s a war zone out there at some of these places,” said Councilman Richard Alarcon, a member of the council’s Government Efficiency Committee, which called the hearing.

Solutions proposed by volunteers and election officials include:

* Recruiting more poll workers and increasing their pay in hopes of reducing the number of no-shows, or reducing the number of poll workers required in each precinct.

* Combining more state, county and city elections so that voting is required less often.

* Encouraging absentee voting to reduce polling place problems. (Absentee voting currently represents 14% to 26% of the turnout).

* Closing the polls one hour early to cut down on the time requirement.