Scattered Problems Greet California Voters

Voters filled polling places throughout California today, some waiting in line more than an hour to vote and others confronting scattered balloting problems.

At one Hollywood poll, voters said they had to wait more than two hours to vote because poll workers did not bring the voting machines needed to cast ballots.

In Orange County, electronic voting machines malfunctioned at a Laguna Beach polling site, forcing election workers to issue paper ballots for more than three hours until the problem could be corrected. More than 100 of those voters cast paper ballots instead of using the electronic machines.

It was a low-tech problem that caused delays at a polling place in San Pedro. Voters there said a printing mistake excluded some local races from their ballots and they had to leave without voting.

“They’re missing a whole section,” said voter Linnie Boone. “In two hours they were going to get corrected ballots. Some people may be voting just for president.”

Dan Canning said he was first in line to vote at his Hollywood polling place — he arrived at 6:35 a.m., 25 minutes before polls opened — but the polls did not open at 7 a.m. as scheduled. A poll worker explained that voting machines did not arrive on time and the wait could last more than an hour.

“I had to leave because I had to be at work at 8 o’clock,” Canning said. “Many people who have never voted before were coming out to vote for the first time.... I wonder how many of them arrived this morning and were discouraged by being turned away and won’t vote tonight.”

Officials with the Los Angeles County registrar of voters downplayed the polling problems.

Deborah Wright, a top aide to registrar Conny McCormack, said that at the Hollywood poll, a poll manager forgot to bring the vote recorders, the book-style devices in voting booths where voters insert and mark their ballots.

“All other supplies and equipment arrived in advance,” she said, including paper ballots. People were offered the option of using paper ballots but “the voters refused to do that,” even though the alternative ballot cards were identical in appearance and usage to absentee ballots, she said.

Several voters, however, insisted they were not given that choice.

Westside voters faced a range of wait times to cast their votes. At a sleepy residential polling station in east Culver City, parking spaces were ample, and voters seemed to spend more time filling out their ballots than waiting in line.

In Santa Monica, however, the wait at some polling stations was nearly an hour.

Mauro Monteiro and Francesca Corrado didn’t seem to mind the wait at Santa Monica’s Lincoln Middle School. The pair, who hail from Brazil and France, respectively, recently earned U.S. citizenship, and were chattering excitedly after experiencing their first vote here — although Corrado, 34, seemed a little incredulous that the dot-strewn grid she placed in the ballot box would actually be counted as her vote.

“I was thinking, you know, how is it that they know this card is associated with me?” she said.

Times staff writers Christine Hanley, Wendy Thermos, Richard Fausset and Lisa Richardson contributed to this report.