OC Register: Paper ballots

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Paper ballots

It's going to be back to the paper ballots for the April 11 special state Senate election. And they won't be the ones you punch holes in; federal law bans those after Jan. 1. Instead, it will be a SAT-style fill-in-the-dot affair.

The electronic ballots that the county has been using since March 2004 need to be retrofitted so they'll produce paper ballots as backup - a change instituted for next year by the Legislature. But the state doesn't expect to certify the county's retrofit plan until next month, which doesn't leave enough time for the job to be done by April 11.

With the paper ballots comes a lengthy counting process, because each one needs to be fed through an optical scanner. With 80,000 to 95,000 paper ballots expected, acting Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley said the process could take a couple of days.

But that doesn't mean you'll necessarily have to wait that long to find out who won. In this month's special congressional election, 65 percent of votes were cast with absentee ballots - and most of those were counted and posted within minutes of the polls closing. Unless it is a tight race, the outcome should be clear by then.

Both candidates to declare so far, Republicans Tom Harman and Diane Harkey, told the Buzz that they learned their lesson from this month's election and will be heavily promoting and soliciting absentee votes.

http://www.ocregister.com/ocregister/news/local/article_915366.php (and scroll down)