Decision ’96 / Key issues and races in the California vote : A Vote for Variety : From Mortuaries to Garages, L.A. County’s Polling Places Are an Eclectic and Unusual Mix

With its reputation as a place where dead voters can sway an election, Chicago would probably die for the kind of polling place Santa Monica has.

It’s a funeral home.

Voting booths are set up in the corner of the viewing room where the casket usually sits. The ballot box is positioned a few steps away--in the area where mourners usually gather to pay their last respects.

The mortuary is one of 5,913 polling sites in Los Angeles County that will open their doors to the 3,620,677 registered voters for Tuesday’s primary election. And it is not the only unusual place ballots will be cast.

Some will go to the beach. Others will line up in places such as mattress showrooms, check cashing offices, a mental health center, a traffic school, college fraternity houses and an ice cream parlor.

Those kinds of places--coupled with the hundreds of residential garages and living rooms used for voting--make for an unusual election day. Especially for those from the East who are used to casting ballots in public buildings such as schools, post offices and town halls.

But the eclectic mix gives Los Angeles’ polling places a neighborly feel. Even with ballot boxes in funeral homes.

“It sets kind of a somber tone for voting,” said John Tipre, who lives down the street from the Pierce Bros. Moeller Mortuary in Santa Monica and will vote there Tuesday. “But elections themselves are always somber occasions these days.”

Mortuary operator William Pierce was surprised when elections officials asked to use the viewing room. His is one of four mortuaries in the county welcoming voters Tuesday.

“Some people might feel uncomfortable coming here. But we are in the neighborhood. We have the room and we have plenty of parking. . . . We haven’t heard of anyone complaining,” Pierce said.

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The county registrar-recorder’s office works year-round to line up convenient voting sites. Schools and other public buildings are used when possible. But private property is often more convenient for voters.

“We beg. We bleat. We cry,” said Grace Romero, an elections office spokeswoman, of the search for places.

Recruiting the 29,260 precinct workers who are paid $45 to work the 14-hour election day is also a nonstop job, she said.

“We try to keep a polling place year after year. But we can’t always do that. We had one place in Glendora for 27 elections--a rec room at a mobile home park. But we can’t use it this time.”

Instead, for the first time in the memory of most voters in Precinct 2600025A, they’ll go to Carpet Touch showroom on West Arrow Highway to cast their ballots.

Hundreds of other businesses will also set aside space for voters Tuesday.

The Alcaraz Upholstery Shop will be used by East Los Angeles residents. The showroom at Unicom Communications is available for Santa Clarita voters. The front office of Reina’s Insurance Agency will be used in Pasadena. A meeting room at the Mulhearn Realty office in Norwalk will be lined with booths.

Some election locations are in spectacular settings. Others aren’t.

A home for unwed mothers in Echo Park will be used. So will a homeless shelter in downtown Los Angeles and a pest control company office in Encino.

But other voters will visit a banquet room at a beachfront Charley Brown’s restaurant in Malibu. Some Marina del Rey voters will report to the clubroom at the Mariners Bay Club. A Beverly Hills precinct will cast ballots in the Sunset Room of the posh Beverly Hills Hotel.

Rescue equipment will be shoved aside to make room for voters at a lifeguard building a few steps from the surf on Venice Beach.

The glitzy Directors Guild of America headquarters will open its soaring atrium to Hollywood voters. In past elections, voters have sometimes rubbed elbows with actors attending casting calls and screenings in the building.

“It’s a really pleasant place, bright and airy,” said voter Stefani Lennon, who lives nearby. “I’ve seen some fun things there.”

Balloting will likely have a more reverent feel at the hundreds of churches welcoming voters. A variety of faiths will be represented. And separation of church and state is not an issue on election day.

Rancho Palos Verdes voters will use Congregation Ner Tamid. Redondo Beach residents will line up at the parish hall of Christ Episcopal Church. The Arabic Bible Christian Church will host voters in Long Beach. A Seventh-day Adventist Church will be used by residents of Glendora.

St. Catherine of Alexandria Catholic Church on Catalina Island will open its hall to Avalon voters. Other islanders will vote in a banquet room at The Landing restaurant, at Avalon’s municipal courtroom and at the Harbor Reef’s dining room at Isthmus Cove.

(Those on San Clemente Island vote by mail, however. Elections officials have designated it as an “absentee ballot precinct.”)

To the astonishment of many first-time Los Angeles voters, private homes from Beverly Hills to Bellflower will be turned into polling places. Garages are the most common part of the house used. But living rooms, dining rooms and dens are often put to use.

Seven voting booths are lined up against the china cabinet in the garden room at Doreen Booth’s San Marino home, where 400 of her neighbors have come to vote for the past decade--some bearing cookies and candy. “It’s very social. We talk most of the time,” Booth said.

Eula James, who has let voters traipse through her home in South-Central Los Angeles for 10 years, considers hosting elections a civic duty.

“What they give me doesn’t even pay to get my carpet cleaned,” she said. “But I do it to be a good citizen.”

Wheelchair access is a problem at some residences. If disabled voters cannot get to the ballot box, curbside voting is authorized and precinct workers will take a blank ballot out to the voter’s car, according to county election administrators.

Polling place owners also help out, though. West Hills resident Jane Gordon remembers how residents of a Berquist Avenue home tried to assist her wheelchair-bound mother a few presidential elections ago.

“They had seen how much voting had meant to her in the primary. So for the November election they had built a ramp so she could get to where they were voting. It was so sweet,” Gordon said.

Others who offer their space also try hard to accommodate voters.

At the Van Ness Recovery House, an alcohol and drug-abuse treatment center in Hollywood, employees will post signs reminding residents not to disturb voters using a meeting room, said administrative assistant Carrissa Villalobos.

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In Silver Lake, workers at Red Lilly Plumbing will move displays of sinks, toilets and other plumbing supplies to make way for wood-framed canvas voting booths.

“We close off sales in the front, and the plumbers come and go by the back door on election day,” said company co-owner Jim Young. “It’s no problem--the secretary comes in early to open up for voters.”

The 7 a.m. opening of polls sometimes causes confusion, however.

That happened during the June 1993 election when operators of an Encino car and body shop designated as a polling place didn’t show up to unlock their front door until 9 a.m.

As angry voters milled around out front, poll workers nervously checked the rules and discovered that it was legal for them to set up a makeshift polling place on the Ventura Boulevard sidewalk. So instead of booths, voters punched their ballots on the shop’s brick front stoop.

This being Los Angeles, most voters do not give a second thought to voting in garages and automobile showrooms.

For Tuesday, county officials have lined up polling sites at such places as a Mercedes-Benz showroom in Santa Monica, a Nissan dealership in Torrance, a Volkswagen outlet in Long Beach, a Chrysler-Plymouth dealership in Van Nuys, a Chevrolet showroom in Highland Park and a Jaguar and Rolls Royce dealership in Pasadena.

Balloting booths will share space with a 1997 Ford F-150 pickup truck and a 1996 Mustang coupe in the Walker-Buerge Ford showroom in West Los Angeles. Voters won’t be accosted by salespeople, promised Fidel Peterson, a dealership manager. “There’s no selling,” he said, quickly adding: “But if they have questions, we’ll help them.”

Polling place owners are paid $25 for the use of their homes or businesses. For many, that doesn’t come close to covering their costs.

At the Black Belt Academy in Torrance, owner Young Hyun has canceled all karate lessons Tuesday to make room for voters.

“I’m not a citizen yet myself, so I can’t vote,” said the Korean-born Hyun. “Yeah, I’ll lose money. But I want to do it for the community.”

Elections officials say they get occasional complaints about voting locations, although most gripes center around late openings and long lines--not the ambience of the place.

Two years ago, North Hollywood residents grumbled about voting at a halfway house for paroled prison inmates. “I don’t have a bodyguard, but I’ve got my running shoes on,” voter Laurie Baggao said at the time. “No high heels today.”

Voting done in funeral homes--where the accent is on soft lighting, restful decor and thick carpeting--is inevitably quieter and more dignified. Tuesday’s list of funeral parlor polling places includes Douglass Mortuaries in Paramount, Turner & Stevens Mortuary in Pasadena and Brothers Mortuary in Long Beach.

A block east of Pierce Brothers Moeller Mortuary in Santa Monica, newly re-registered voter Edward Mazurek did a double take the other day when he inspected his voter pamphlet and noticed the address of his new polling place.

“It’s definitely most unusual,” Mazurek said. And come to think of it, “I’m a big absentee voter. I think I’ll mail mine in.”

Times staff writers Emi Endo and Nona Yates and correspondent Mayrav Saar contributed to this story.