FREMONT- In the Fremont BART station, early morning commuters rushed through turnstiles, some running to catch the train ready to leave the station.

At 7 a.m., one of the commuters stepped up to a bunting-draped table piled high with pamphlets. She filled out a form and handed it to someone from the office of the Alameda County Registrar of Voters. Even though the election was weeks away, the commuter had just voted.

“Just like clockwork,” said David Robillard, part of the 4-person team working at Alameda County’s mobile voting unit—a new early voting opportunity.

Consider it a campaign where they don’t care how you vote.

This year Alameda County joined a handful of more adventuresome counties that have moved early voting stations into unorthodox places, such as malls, transit stations and college campuses. Elections officials see the mobile voting unit as a way to boost voter participation by bringing the polls out to the public.

“I was very surprised when I walked in. And delighted,” said Billie Vincent, the Fremont resident who was the morning’s first voter.

During its first hour at the BART station, the mobile voting unit snagged an early voter every 10 minutes.

Oakland resident Garry Jackson, 50, used downtime between a BART ride and a bus the rest of the way to work in San Jose to cast a ballot.

“If I can get it done now and not have to go to the polling station and wait in line, that’s great,” said Jackson.

California law allows voters to cast a ballot starting 29 days before an election, but such early voting is largely done in county elections offices.

According to the California Secretary of States office, only 13 of California’s 58 counties offer early voting at satellite locations—places outside the local registrar’s office. But local elections officials install the bulk of these satellite locations in city halls, public libraries, and the like.

Alameda County first set up satellite early voting five years ago. Guy Ashley, a spokesman with the Alameda County Registrar of Voters, described the turnout at the traditional satellite early voting sites as “paltry.”
“You don’t just wander down to city hall to do stuff. Unless you have permits to file or taxes to pay, you’re not going there,” said Ashley.

The poor showing in this year’s primary—in which only 28-percent of the county’s eligible voters participated—spurred acting registrar of voters Alameda County David MacDonald.

‘The idea was really to give people more opportunities to vote, to try something a little creative,” said MacDonald. The county would try taking their voting booths to the people.

Alameda County has been quick to adopt new ideas in voting, but with some mixed results. Four years ago, the county paid $12 million for new touch-screen voting machines, which miscast some ballots in the 2003 recall election. After changes in voting regulations requiring all electronic voting machines to create a paper record, the county had to spend another $13 million to replace the original Diebold-made machines with machines from Oakland-based Sequoia Systems. Both the Diebold and Sequoia systems faced repeated court challenges over security.

While paper ballot scanners will be used for polls on Election Day, the mobile voting unit uses the touch screen machines normally reserved for voters with disabilities.

Both Orange and Riverside counties in southern California have embraced early voting in less traditional satellite locations. And voters in both counties have taken to the change.

Riverside elections officials first set up voting in shopping malls in 2000. And last fall they offered limited debut of ROVER, a custom built RV outfitted with five voting booths—paid for by a $173,000 grant from the county’s Indian gaming committee.

For the 2004 general election, three of the four mall-based voting stations in Riverside County took in more early voting ballots than did the registrar’s office. In total, more than 22,000 of the county’s voters cast their ballot at malls.

That same year Orange County rolled out an ambitious array of early voting satellite stations, with 30 locations ranging from supermarkets to malls to John Wayne Airport.

While logistical problems with the supermarkets led Orange County to drop those locations this year, spokesman Brett Rowley said the airport has proved on of the most popular early voting sites.

“When we scaled back the sites this year, people wanted to make sure that we kept the airport,” said Rowley.

But even with the more successful programs like Riverside, there have been difficulties.

ROVER’s first outing this year at a county office in downtown Riverside drew only 11 voters. Sue Martine, who coordinates ROVER for the county, said that the low numbers were probably due to the fact that residents are just now getting their voter information packets, which have the ROVER schedule.

Satellite voting locations in Alameda, Orange and Riverside counties, whether mobile or at the mall, rely on similar technology to make sure that voters just vote once in an election.

Before poll workers give an early voter a ballot, they connect to the county’s central voter registration database via a secure connection. Once they confirm the registration, they issue the voter a ballot and mark the name as having voted—preventing anyone from voting multiple times.

This process also separates verification from the actual voting, keeping ballots anonymous.

Thomas Patterson, professor at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and author of “The Vanishing Voter,” has tracked the steady decades-long decline in voter participation.

Patterson said expanded early voting opportunities can add to voter participation, but factors outside the control of elections officials drive larger voting fluctuations. A potential change in the control of Congress, for example, will bring more voters out.

Even with these fluctuations, Patterson found that states can successfully encourage voter participation.

“The states that have same-day registration, they’re leading,” said Patterson, who cited a 15-percent higher voter participation rate in the six states that allow voters to register on election day.

A study published last year by the California Voter Foundation looked at the flip side of the question—why people don’t vote.

According to the survey, one in four of California’s infrequent registered voters (those who voted in zero or one of the previous four elections) cited being to busy to vote. The survey also noted that 16-percent of infrequent voters worked more than 50 hours per week.

Laila Berrios, a student full-time nursing student at Cal State University East Bay (CSUEB), fits the profile.

Beyond her classes, the 27-year old mother of two has a clinical rotation and said she wouldn’t have time to vote on Election Day. She stopped at the mobile voting unit, but as a Contra Costa resident she couldn’t she couldn’t use Alameda County’s polls

“I figure I’ll let this vote go by,” said Barrio.

Over the two days at Cal State University of the East Bay, more than 65 votes were cast at the mobile voting unit, which was set up at the entrance of the student union. Campus organizers and school administrators sent out a broadcast email announcing that the mobile voting unit would be on campus.

During the second day on campus, the county’s new printer-equipped voting machines caused a backlog when one of the machines ran out of paper. As the line backed up, some busy students who would have voted on their lunch break decided not to wait.

Thomas Lind, 38-year old student in the teaching program, did wait.

“I wanted to give them the numbers they needed to keep this thing going,” said the self-described idealist. Lind said that he believes that the ease of these kinds of early voting machines will improve voter participation, and lead to a “better democracy.”

The success at CSUEB contrasts with an afternoon at MacArthur BART and a full day at Berkeley’s Center for Independent Living, which provides services to people with disabilities. At each of those stops, only three people cast early votes.

With three days left on the mobile voting tour, 166 residents had taken advantage of the mobile voting unit—far less than a single day at the Riverside set-up at the Galleria Mall where elections officials camp out for more than a week.

Elections officials say that the novelty of the program (at the BART stations many commuters thought the mobile voting unit was just a voter registration stand) and the fact that mobile voting unit spent only one day at most locations worked against them.

Then there was the size of this year’s ballot. With 13 state initiatives and an overwhelming 191-page state voter guide, many voters simply were not ready for early voting.

“It does clash directly with the theme that we were acting on, which was being there and having people vote spontaneously,” said Ashley.

Despite the small numbers this year, county registrar MacDonald said he considers the experiment worthwhile, and plans to expand it for the next election.

In the rush of election season, MacDonald hasn’t had time to consider how many man-hours are being put into the 15-stop mobile voting tour. He doesn’t see it at relevant.

“How do you put a price tag on the value of giving people the opportunity to vote?” said MacDonald.

Over the last decade, at best 60-percent of the county’s eligible voters participated in elections; at worst, less than 30-percent.

“A very small percentage of eligible voters are determining elections, and anything we can of to increase that turnout, I think we should do it,” said MacDonald.