Orange County Discovers Uncounted Absentee Ballots

The Orange County registrar of voters office discovered early Tuesday that it failed to count nearly 8,000 absentee ballots from the November election, forcing officials to frantically reprocess the votes so the Board of Supervisors could meet its state-mandated Tuesday deadline to certify the results.

Though the recount didn’t change the outcome of any races, it was an embarrassment that prompted the board’s chairwoman to call for an immediate investigation into the results of the November election.

It’s also the latest mistake to plague the county’s aging punch-card voting system, which would be replaced by a $25-million computer system that the board is expected to vote on this month.

“I certainly don’t want a Florida here in Orange County,” said Board Chairwoman Cynthia P. Coad, referring to the botched vote counting during the 2000 presidential election. “I just can’t understand how it happened.”

The problems probably occurred because a worker inserted an incorrect “header card” into a vote-counting machine. A header card tells the machine how to count a stack of ballots.

As a result, absentee ballots cast by 7,991 residents of Anaheim, Yorba Linda, San Clemente, Westminster and Fountain Valley were not initially counted.

Steve Rodermund, chief deputy registrar, said he first learned Monday night that thousands of absentee ballots from San Clemente had not been counted.

City officials said they called the registrar Monday after noticing discrepancies in the final numbers. The tally for the November election showed that absentee ballots in San Clemente made up 1.9% of the vote. They typically make up 28% to 30%.

By Tuesday morning, officials concluded that ballots in four other cities also were missed.

The Board of Supervisors was scheduled to certify the election results at 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, but the recounting had not been finished. After Rodermund reported the uncounted votes, supervisors delayed the certification vote until 12:30 p.m. Though the extra votes didn’t affect any outcomes, they did shave a six-vote difference between two contenders for a Yorba Linda City Council seat to three votes. That race is being recounted at the request by one of the candidates.

“Even though it was embarrassing, we came out and said we have a problem and we need to do something about it and we did,” Rodermund said.

“We could have tried to hide this, and we probably would have gotten away with it. But that’s not the way we work in Orange County.”

Some elected officials, many of whom were attending swearing-in ceremonies for new council members this week, were concerned about the last-minute revelations.

The Orange County registrar has been embarrassed by a series of errors in recent years, including incorrect sample ballots, mislabeled candidates and political parties, improper Vietnamese translation, missing fiscal analyses in voter pamphlets and precincts running out of Spanish ballots on election day.

“There have been ongoing concerns with the competence of the registrar of voters,” termed-out Anaheim Mayor Tom Daly said. “In fairness to the operation, anything less than a Swiss watch becomes very noticeable. But ... I think the supervisors probably are not entirely surprised by yet another incident.”

Added San Clemente Mayor Jim Dahl: “I think they made a real mistake here, and it needs to be investigated.”

After hearing of the lost votes, Coad called for an investigation of the November vote tallies. County staffers must report back to board members by Jan. 2.

Under the current voting system, county residents punch their choices on a series of cards, which are hand-fed into machines -- some up to three decades old -- that count and tally the vote. This allows the introduction of human error, which county officials hope to eliminate by moving to an electronic voting system.

On Dec. 17, the Board of Supervisors is scheduled to discuss three options: two touch-screen proposals that are similar to ATM machines and a third that uses a mouse-like device that allows voters to highlight their selection.

A new system is expected to cost about $25 million. The county expects to receive $16.7 million in state grant funds and $8.1 million in federal money to pay for it.

After hearing of the latest problems, Supervisor Jim Silva added: “It’s pretty evident we have to go to touch-screen.”