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| Tuesday, Jun 6 2006 8:26 AM
Last Updated: Wednesday, Jun 7 2006 9:17 AM
Early-morning technical problems with Kern County voting machines led to a nightmare evening full of computer glitches and delayed election results.
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William Embrey votes at the fairground's Harvest Hall where problems with the computer voting machines forced early voters to resort to paper ballots.
The final results didn't get posted until 3:23 a.m., according to the Kern County Election Department website.
Elections officials discovered Tuesday morning that many of the data cards used to record votes didn’t work.
The problems with voting cards inconvenienced hundreds of voters, forcing them to return to polls later or cast paper ballots.
The morning glitch was fixed and voting ended on time at 8 p.m.
But the county’s computerized counting system developed a new twitch around 10 p.m. when county elections officials tried to feed paper ballots and electronic ballots into the system at the same time.
Supervisor Michael Rubio said the system read the paper ballots as provisional ballots and incorrectly assumed that all the electronic votes had been counted.
Kern County Registrar Ann Barnett said the elections department reversed the mistake and worked to input the electronic votes before dealing with the paper ballots.
But the trouble left voters and candidates hanging for hours with no news of how races were progressing.
County officials had discussed extending polling hours for voters who were turned away in the morning, but nixed the idea because it would have delayed the statewide vote count.
“Once we got everything straightened out, it was fine,” Chief Deputy Registrar Sandy Brockman said of the voting card problem. “I’m very grateful that the people of Kern County were so understanding.”
Election workers learned at 7 a.m. when the polls opened that many voter cards — the cards voters use to work the voting machines — were not programmed correctly, Brockman said.
“A procedure that no one told us about needs to be done,” Brockman said. “It’s a widespread problem in the county.”
A Kern County Sheriff’s Department helicopter delivered materials to Ridgecrest and election workers met poll workers halfway in outlying areas, Brockman said.
“It’s a nightmare I never wanted to handle,” Brockman said.
Brockman said Tuesday night that a survey of 130 polling sites led officials to believe 300 to 500 voters countywide were inconvenienced. Some were directed to the election office to vote, and some centers handed out a limited number of paper ballots.
John Riddiough said he had to write his choices by placing his paper on a wall because there were not enough tables at Harvest Hall at the Kern County Fairgrounds. It’s not confidential, he said.
Greg Van Mullem said he used a paper ballot at the Southwest Library because he is a Democrat, but Republicans were told at about 8:15 a.m. they didn’t have any more GOP paper ballots.
“I got to vote but Republicans were being turned away,” he said.
County supervisors discussed the malfunction at their regular morning meeting. Barnett told the board voters needed access cards that were cleared of information stored from a previous election. She said voters could fax their ballots to her office, but that idea was dismissed by the afternoon meeting because the California Secretary of State’s office said it wasn’t allowed.
It would have taken an order from a judge to extend polling hours, and Supervisor Ray Watson said he didn’t want to see the election challenged over the problem.
-- Staff writers Jason Kotowski, Shellie Branco and Sarah Ruby contributed to this report