Registrars office in hot water

With a series of computer mishaps, a virtual tie between the city's top mayoral candidates and nearly 8000 absentee ballots in question, Registrar of Voters Germaine Q. Wong, had her hands full on election day.

The trouble began early Tuesday night, Wong said, when several computer terminals began malfunctioning as ballots were being delivered to the registrar's office on Folsom Street. She said the computers are specially equipped to conserve energy, but the building's electrical system could not adapt.

The delay lasted two hours, which meant that election results were unavailable until 9:30 that evening. For many city officials however, the results were too little, too late.

"You can be sure that I will be looking into this as soon as possible," said Supervisor Susan Leal, who was on hand to observe the results. "I'm sure the rest of the Board will want to see what went wrong," she added.

The computer glitch may just be the tip of the iceberg of complaints that Wong and her staff will face from city officials. There is still the question of 8000 uncounted absentee ballots.

Wong said voters in the 94108, 94109, 94110 and 94111 zip codes who received ballots may have unknowingly voted for the wrong candidate because of a printing error.

She would not speculate on the outcome of the ballot controversy except to say it would be at least a day before her office would be able to examine the controversial ballots.

City officials say the worst-case scenario would be to hold new elections, but that is highly unlikely, according to Paul Manfuso from the registrar's office.

Still, with the election results so close, candidates may be looking at legal options -- pending an investigation by the city attorney and the district attorney's offices.

"I can understand if (the) printers might have made errors," said Supervisor Leal, "but the registrar should have caught the mistakes before (the ballots) went out."

Supervisor and former mayoral candidate Angela Alioto was even less forgiving.

"I have never seen this big a mess of an election," she said. "Heads will roll."

[ Golden Gater Online November 9, 1995 ]

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