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OAKLAND -- Despite a few reports of glitches, Alameda County's new electronic voting system got good reviews from voters, election officials, and precinct workers in its debut on Tuesday. Updated Nov. 6, 1:10 am
"So far, it has been a success," said Bradley Clark, Alameda County's registrar of voters, after the polls closed. "Only a couple of machines went down out of 4,000."
Officials had warned that the vote count wouldn't be any quicker until workers learned the new system. But by midnight, three-quarters of the votes had been tallied, a faster count than usual.
Alameda became the first county in the Bay Area to make the transition to all-electronic voting. It replaced its 30-year-old punch-card system -- the kind that threw the 2000 presidential election into confusion -- with terminals that looked like automatic teller machines.
After signing the roster at their polling places, voters inserted a key that looked like a credit card into the machine. This brought up the ballot on a flat screen, where voters made their choices by responding to various prompts.
Workers at the handful of polling places visited by reporters on Tuesday said they liked the change.
"Voters were spending only about two-and-a-half minutes in the booth," said Nathan Shoehalter, who was working at a polling place on Bret Harte Street in the Berkeley Hills. "There were very few questions about what to do. The longest wait we've had is about five minutes, but the problem there is the long ballot."
Some polling stations reported minor problems, such as temporarily jammed machines, but these were easily solved.
Poll worker Juliet Hart said that by 10 a.m., about 200 voters had cast their ballots with only minor difficulties on the dozen machines in the basement of the First Baptist Church on Solano Avenue.
"We've had little problems except two cards won't be read by the machines," Hart said.
"These voting cards had been used several times already and stopped working."
Poll workers replaced the cards and quickly fixed the problem.
Elaine Ginnold, assistant registrar of voters, said that the day had been "very, very hectic."
She equated much of that to the long ballot and new voting system and said that most problems were simple and troubleshooters helped poll workers over the phone.
"We had 200 extra machines to deploy, all were used to either replace machines that were out of service or because polling station had long lines," said Ginnold.
Many voters enjoyed the novelty of the new system. Ed and Mary Weingart, who have lived in Oakland for 40 years, said they had read the directions for using the machines in their sample ballot before coming to vote.
"I am not computer savvy, but I didn't have a problem using it," Ed Weingart said.
Others expressed concern about a lack of privacy because the screens on the new machines were big and brightly lit, and curtains no longer separated the voting booths.
"My blood pressure is starting to go up," said one voter who refused to give her name. "It doesn't feel very private to me."
She had asked to use one of the old stations after saying that the new booths made it too easy to see over her shoulder.
"There's not enough room in there," she said.
Alameda County's voting machines were made by Diebold Electronic Systems of Ohio, maker of the ones used last month in Brazil's presidential elections. Diebold also made the machines used in Georgia, which on Tuesday became the first state to convert to all-electronic voting.
The Georgia election was not a trouble-free debut.
In Terrell County, Ga., the electronic ballot listed the wrong candidates for a commission, and 124 voters made their choices on the wrong ballots, according to Ann Jennings, the director of elections for the county. The precincts were closed for two hours, and a state district court is deciding whether polling places must remain open for two extra hours.
Alameda County has successfully tested the machines in elections in Piedmont. Ginnold said that 2,500 poll workers attended two-hour training sessions this fall to learn to use the technology.
Technology training proved to be the problem in Florida's recent gubernatorial primary, when poll workers had trouble starting the machines. Election officials were quick to point out that Alameda County's machines are altogether different.
The machines offered ballots in English, Spanish or Chinese. Unlike the paper ballots with the infamous dangling chads, the machine let voters know if they have skipped a part of the ballot or voted for too many candidates. Before finalizing their choices, voters could review their ballots.
Special features allowed blind and other disabled citizens to vote without assistance. Machines offered audio ballots so that hearing-impaired voters could listen through headsets to their choices, as well as adjustable height and larger text for the physically and visually disabled.
Votes were stored on a memory chip inside the computer as well as a removable memory card, which, for this election, was sent to seven tabulation sites throughout Alameda County. Once counted, the memory chips were sent to the county registrar's office for a final count.
"It was a really good experience. It's about time they did something like this," Julia Fletcher, a first-year poll inspector, said at the end of her day at Oakland's Lincoln Elementary School. "I was really surprised how well it went."
Los Angeles, one of the handful of remaining counties that still uses a punch-card system, sent an observer to watch Alameda County's first test.
"I thought today went extraordinarily well," Michael Petrucello, assistant Los Angeles registrar, said as he watched workers tally the votes at the county registrar's office.
Petrucello's main concern for his county was cost. With more than 5,000 precincts -- compared to Alameda's 1,096 -- Los Angeles' transition will cost between $70 to $100 million.
"The punch card costs seven cents a vote. This new system costs a lot compared to that," he said. "We won't be using this system until November, 2005."
Alameda County's transition took five years and cost $12 million. Because of a $200 million bond measure that passed last March, the state will reimburse counties up to two-thirds of the cost of transitioning over to electronic systems. A federal bill will also assist counties with this massive expense.