MrPopup

Wild Card, and It Isn't Schwarzenegger
By KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

NORWALK, Calif., Aug. 8 ? Add another wacky element to the carnival-like recall election of Gov. Gray Davis in California: millions of voters will be voting on punch cards, those of pimpled, dimpled chad fame so discredited by Florida in 2000.

The punch card was outlawed in California, as of March 2004, because of the Florida chaos. But many counties have not had time to make the transition to new machinery. Rather than risk a headlong rush toward unfamiliar electronic equipment ? a hallmark of Florida's later voting disaster in 2002 ? nearly half of California's 58 counties, including Los Angeles, are sticking with punch cards for the recall.

County officials say that the bad publicity from Florida has made voters much more careful about sweeping off hanging chads, the bits of paper that can cling to ballots, making them hard for machines to read. As a result, they say, punch cards are no longer any less reliable than any other voting method.

The main problem with punch cards, depending on the type, is that they can hold a limited number of candidates. Once the number of candidates is determined ? the deadline for filing is Saturday afternoon ? officials will have a clearer sense of how clumsy the ballot, and the balloting, may be.

Punch cards certainly have detractors. Governor Davis and the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California have sued the state's elections officials, saying that punch cards have higher error rates than other methods and are more prevalent in low-income neighborhoods. Punch cards, they say, are putting the Oct. 7 recall on the path to disenfranchising voters.

The governor and others predict that the mechanics of this election ? the punch cards, the short time for preparation and a reduction in some counties of the number of polling places ? could mean disaster.

"The result is a disparity of voting opportunity that makes Florida's election procedures look almost pristine by comparison," the governor's lawyers wrote in court papers seeking unsuccessfully to delay the vote until March, when it would coincide with the presidential primary.

"In isolation, any one of these problems would threaten the state's ability to conduct a fair election," the lawyers wrote. "The combination of these factors, however, ensures that the voters will be denied their rights to equal protection and a fair election under the state and federal constitutions unless this court postpones the recall election until March 2, 2004."

By then, Mr. Davis's lawyers say, the counties will have switched to more reliable voting equipment and will not have to reduce the number of polling places.

California's Supreme Court declined to take the governor's case. But the A.C.L.U.'s case against punch cards is still alive in federal court. Mark Rosenbaum, legal director of the civil liberties group, said the recall was "a fiasco in waiting."

Several county voter registrars said they had concerns, but not those mentioned in the lawsuits. They are more worried about the short time; the expense (perhaps $70 million) when the state and many counties are facing yawning deficits; and the swarm of candidates, whose names could make a long ballot confusing to voters and hard to count.

"When you're in a triage situation, some things have to go by the wayside," said Conny B. McCormack, the registrar of Los Angeles County. "It's like a regular hospital versus one that gets bombed: all of a sudden, the people with a broken leg are ignored."

The biggest concern in some counties is that with possibly hundreds of candidates, the ballot could run several pages or onto several cards. Even with instructions to vote once, voters often pick a name on each page or each card, voiding the ballots.

In Orange County, Suzanne Slupsky, the assistant registrar, said voters in her county would use a Datavote punch-card system unless more than 50 candidates run, in which case they would use a paper ballot. The problem with using a long paper ballot, she said, is that tabulating votes might take days.

Ms. McCormack, whose four million voters make Los Angeles the largest voting jurisdiction in the United States, faces the biggest obstacles. In an effort to avert disaster, she is consolidating polling places to 1,800, from 5,000. She says she cannot find enough poll workers to support 5,000 places and many polling sites are booked for other activities.

"What I do in every election is assess the risk and determine how to minimize it," she said as she patrolled a warehouse in East Los Angeles where workers were loading pallets of punch cards for delivery to polling places. "Every precinct is an opportunity for error. If you have 1,800 opportunities for error, instead of 5,000, you've minimized your opportunities for error."

And she is resurrecting the punch cards that she stored away in June, with a mock funeral service, thinking they would never be used again. She said punch cards got a bad reputation in Florida, where the card holders were not properly maintained.

The Florida experience led to a consent decree in which the nine California counties that used punch cards agreed to switch to other methods by March 2004. Although Ms. McCormack is looking forward to a more efficient voting method, she bristles at the disruption that the Florida voting has caused here.

"Nine counties in California lost their voting system for no reason except hysteria, an hysterical overreaction," Ms. McCormack said. "The biggest irony is that before 2000, the one thing voters didn't do was check the back of their cards for hanging chads. Now they do. Now we have the cleanest ballot ever, and it's gone!"

Moreover, she said, Mr. Davis was elected by voters using punch cards and he never complained about that.

Federal legislation overhauling the nation's voting systems did not ban punch cards. But it did make money available to states that wanted to dump them, and several are switching to electronic machines. Serious questions, however, are emerging about the reliability and security of electronic machines, stalling the trend toward them..

One county in California that switched to electronic machines was Shasta, 90 miles south of the Oregon border. Ann Reed, Shasta's registrar of voters, said her new equipment arrived a few weeks ago ? then came word that the recall vote was set for Oct. 7.

Ms. Reed said she was worried that she had so little time to learn how to use the machines. "We don't even know how to turn them on yet," she said.

Problems with electronic voting confounded many counties in Florida in 2002, two years after the disaster with punch cards. The counties were ordered to replace their punch cards, and many chose electronic machines that turned out to be temperamental.

"I'm very worried about the whole process," Ms. Reed said. "I've worked in the county clerk's office for 40 years, and I have never ever seen anything like this, with the lack of time to throw this together."

Sally McPherson, registrar in San Diego, with 1.25 million voters, was on the verge of signing a $31 million contract for touch-screen machines when the recall was scheduled. She is returning to punch cards, too, with full confidence. "The last election was the cleanest election we've ever had because voters and poll workers are totally aware of chads," Ms. McPherson said.

Scott Konopasek, registrar in San Bernardino County, with 630,000 voters, said he was less worried about the recall than about its effect on local elections a month later. Of California's 58 counties, 43 have local elections on Nov. 4. His county uses a system similar to punch cards.

"The recall diverts attention from those," Mr. Konopasek said. "But you have to slay the alligator that's closest to you."

Jesse Durazo, registrar of voters in Santa Clara County, with 730,000 voters, faces a similar problem. His county is switching to touch-screen machines. He has no intention of trying to rush the system into place, but he is using them in November. For the recall in October, he is dusting off his punch cards. That means he is preparing for two elections on different systems. Like others, Mr. Durazo said he was determined to make the elections run smoothly.

"The logistics are horrendous, the stress on people to get this done is tremendous," he said. "But my job is to pull it off. We're professionals at running elections. That's what we do."

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jas1552

Anybody that doesn't remember Florida and check for hanging or dimpled chads is an idiot who shouldn't be voting anyway.

jimmyf

I don't give a flying fuck what we use, as long as Davis is GONE. DipShit helped to screw this state up. Next has to be
the state Senate and Congress, because he dam sure didn't do it ALL by himself. This state is fuck and not just with the
debt. More morons in our state Govt. than carter has pills. No dam money and they want to expand social programs,
tripled my god dam car taxes.
My utility bills are through the dam roof, because Davis made secret deals with power suppliers, (still won't make 'em
public). The car registration will cause a ton of poor people to drive illegal and that is a fucking fact.

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loverboy

david is out of my list