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SAN FRANCISO - Hopes for a smooth elections in San Francisco were dashed Tuesday when up to 100 polling places ran out of ballots and left voters waiting long after some polls had closed. Updated Nov 6, 3:00 pm
John Arntz, acting director for the San Francisco Department of Elections, told a room full of campaign staff and reporters at City Hall Tuesday night that his department could not begin announcing results as long as there were still people waiting to vote. "We tried some different things that didn't work out as well as we'd hoped," said Arntz. "It's a disappointment, and for me personally, I don't want the department to take another hit. We want to have a good show."
Instead, he got another typical San Francisco election.
At first there were only a few minor glitches. A poll worker at Larkin Street and Broadway showed up at the wrong polling place, a frustrated voter walked off with his ballot at the James Lick auditorium, and there were reports of jammed voting machines throughout the city. But the real problems started in the afternoon, during the after-work rush.
Tuesday's election relied on 140 department staff, 200 sheriff's deputies, 50 to 60 trained troubleshooters, ballot transportation from the Department of Parking and Traffic and around 3,000 volunteer poll workers to make everything run smoothly.
Over the past decade, headlines about the department have not been kind. Some problems have been almost comical, like wet ballots being dried in the microwave, ballot-box lids found floating in the Bay, or a poll worker checking himself into a mental facility on Elections Day, trapping hundreds of blank ballots in his apartment. Others, like 324,000 votes improperly counted in the November 2000 election, have created serious doubts about the department's integrity. The California Secretary of State's office has been involved in every San Francisco election since 1995, giving the county the worst elections record in the state.
Last November, voters passed an initiative that promised to clean up San Francisco elections by creating an independent commission to oversee elections in the city and set general policy for the Department of Elections. But the new commission has drawn its own share of bad press. Its members were accused of holding secret meetings, flinging racial and anti-gay slurs at each other, firing the department director without a proper hearing and racking up $150,000 of unbudgeted legal fees.
Arntz said that earlier in the day his department felt ready to handle the demand for extra ballots. "We had 55 field election deputies out there," he said. . "We had enough ballots to cover a 55 to 60 percent voter turn-out." At five o'clock, the department replaced field election deputies as planned with the sheriff's deputies who would close the polls and escort the ballots back to City Hall. But these deputies did not carry extra ballots.
Things quickly got out of control. "We were watching the numbers throughout the afternoon, and around four or five there was a tremendous increase," said Arntz. "The calls for cards overcame our ability to send them out."
The polling place at Dolores and 19th Street was one of the many affected. Around 6:30 p.m., it was out of ballots. As 15 frustrated would-be voters milled around the lobby of the Christian Sciences Church, poll inspector Karen Kircker explained their voting options: wait for more ballots to arrive, go to City Hall and vote absentee, or go to a neighboring polling place and vote provisionally.
"It does disappoint me," said John Maguire as he thumbed through his voter guide. "I'm just looking up who I'll be e-mailing tonight. They'll definitely hear from me." Most people decided to walk a block and vote provisionally at a neighboring polling place rather than wait for more ballots, but that meant that their ballots must be counted by hand.
While some people speculated that the lack of ballots was due to unusually high voter turnout, poll inspector Kircker had another explanation. "This crew is a real problem. They are all hard of hearing," she said quietly, glancing back at the three elderly poll workers who were starting to count spoiled ballot cards at the table. Because of the number of candidates and issues, Tuesday's election took up four ballot cards. Kircker said that only one of the poll workers was able to assemble the ballots, and often even she got them mixed up, spoiling the set.
Shad Balch, a spokesman for the Secretary of State's office, said that the lack of ballots is a glitch, but it's also a real problem. "There should have been enough ballots," he said. "Now voters have to wait. I really hope they don't leave. It is worth it to wait, especially with how these results are shaping up." The Secretary of State's office had been getting detailed progress reports from the Department of Elections, but nobody ever mentioned a lack of ballots as a potential problem. "We'll be certain to ask about this in the future," Balch said.
By 11 p.m. Tuesday, things were looking better. Arntz said 98 percent of the precincts had been counted and that fewer than 10,000 absentee ballots remained to be processed. He also clarified that, of the 118 calls they received for more ballots, many were duplicates and, although it was too early to give exact numbers, there were probably only a handful that actually ran out of ballots. "I think we did a very good job overall," he said. "I think everyone had an opportunity to vote today. I think those votes counted. I'm very proud of this department."