O.C. Registrar Thanks Poll Workers With Barbecue That Critics Skewer

The Orange County registrar of voters played host at a Saturday barbecue for about 1,000 volunteers who staffed polls for the problem-plagued March 2 primary in a gesture of gratitude that also served to gather feedback.

Election officials said they will use the information to avoid snafus come the November general election.

A crowd of more than 2,000 poll workers and their families began streaming into the registrar’s Santa Ana office under a cloudy morning sky.

They were given a tour of the office and surveys to complete. The forms asked volunteers whether they thought they received adequate training and support, and asked for suggestions. Several focus groups were scheduled throughout the day. In between filling out forms and attending meetings, volunteers were treated to hamburgers, hot dogs, potato salad and ice cream.

“We wanted to make sure that the poll workers know we do value them,” county Registrar of Voters Steve Rodermund said of the event, the first of its kind.

Rodermund’s office came under fire after poll workers struggling with the county’s new electronic voting system mistakenly gave thousands of voters the wrong ballots March 2.

The electronic-voting machines, designed to replace paper ballots, required voters to obtain an access code from poll workers and then enter it into the voting machines to display the proper ballot on the screen. But some poll workers, unaware that more than one precinct was voting at some polling places, gave voters access codes for the wrong precincts.

In some cases, it did not affect the election’s outcome, because the precincts’ ballots were identical. But county election officials, noting that ballots were frequently different at shared polling places, have estimated that about 2,000 voters received ballots that included races they should not have been allowed to vote in.

Except for one contest for a seat on the county Democratic central committee in which two candidates were separated by five votes and 33 voters were given the wrong ballots, the margins of victory were wide, and nobody has challenged the results certified Tuesday.

Still, some were critical of Saturday’s somewhat festive event. State Sen. Don Perata (D-Oakland) said the barbecue added “insult and disrespect to disenfranchisement.”

Most poll workers who attended the barbecue disagreed. They said a few kinks are to be expected when an entirely new way of voting is introduced.

“It is not a big issue at all,” said Victor Sam, 64, of Anaheim, who left South Africa in 1996. He and his wife, Dorothy, 63, were born in that country, and, as offspring of Chinese immigrants, were not allowed to vote under apartheid.

“The first time we ever voted was when Nelson Mandela was elected [president],” Dorothy Sam said.

“That is being disenfranchised,” her husband said.

When they became U.S. citizens in 2000, one of the first things the Sams did was register to vote and volunteer as poll workers.

Even with problems, the couple said, voting is a privilege to be cherished.

Election officials hope to have the glitches resolved before the November presidential election.

“We were probably 90% there” before March 2, Rodermund said, “but it is that 10% that we need to work on.”

That 10% may involve limiting each polling place to one ballot style, or to a single precinct, to avoid confusion and more training for poll workers. Nearly everyone agreed Saturday that the machines worked flawlessly.

“I’m just glad we caught the problems now rather than in November,” one woman said. “The last thing we need is another Florida.”