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Only trickle of El Paso voters hit polls; but computer glitch slows tally

By David Crowder El Paso Times

On an election day lacking any presidential intrigue, a trickle of El Paso voters hit the polls in Texas primary elections Tuesday.

Still, El Paso County elections officials had difficulty counting local ballots.

Because of a computer glitch, the county elections office couldnt add early votes cast on the new touch-screen system the county bought from Global Elections to the election day results counted on the old punch-card system.

Answers were as hard to come by as vote totals.

Theres no problem with our system, said Global Systems representative Rodney Turner.

Looking worried and frustrated all evening, Elections Administrator Helen Jamison said, We have two computer systems and theyre not merging, but I cant really explain it.

Those problems were the disastrous conclusion of an otherwise lackluster day.

A lot of people arent that interested right now, Stella Muqoz said after voting on the West Side Tuesday afternoon. I always vote, and I dont understand why people dont vote nowadays. It makes you feel important.

Muqoz said she voted in the Democratic Primary for Vice President Al Gore after flirting with the idea of crossing over to vote for Bush. She decided against it in the end when Sen. John McCain ceased to be a threat.

By all accounts, this years state and local primary elections were dull compared to the primaries in the last presidential election year. The trend was reflected by the 31 percent decline in early voting, which El Paso County Elections Administrator Helen Jamison called, so disappointing.

In 1996, the Democratic ballot sizzled with hotly contested races for the congressional nomination won by Silvestre Reyes, the state senate nomination won by Eliot Shapleigh, and several state representative and county commissioner races.

More than 63,000 people voted then, 48,134 of them in the Democratic Primary.

This election provoked so little enthusiasm that neither the Democrats nor the Republicans could find enough election judges to run the polls, which put Jamison into a panic late Monday.

We had some very nice people that we practically begged to take on that job, Jamison said. We just wanted bodies to man those polling places. I was calling friends and relatives.

She said she recruited the last judge she needed at 8:30 p.m. Monday for a position that normally would have been assigned weeks or months ago by the Democratic or Republican party chairman.

I was so relieved, I took him the bag of election materials myself, Jamison said. If he hadnt agreed to work that precinct, I guess I wouldve had to do it myself.

Because of inexperienced election judges, there were problems, most of them minor, at a number of polling stations Tuesday. The worst, Jamison said, was at the new Precinct 85 site at Vista Ysleta United Methodist Church, 11860 Rojas, which opened 45 minutes late.

The voters went to the right place, but the judge went to the wrong place, Jamison said. It was unfortunate, and Im hoping all the voters went back later to vote.

Normally, the job of selecting election judges falls to the party chairmen.

We tried! said Democratic Party Chairman Joe Parra. What has happened is that a lot of precinct judges from the past have retired and are not helping out anymore, and we have had a difficult time locating people.

But that wasnt the only reason. Some longtime Democratic poll workers were angry and refused to do the job this year.

Two years ago, the Legislature decided that the party affiliation of election judges in each precinct should be determined by the way that precinct went in the previous governors election.

Because Bush carried El Paso two years ago, Republican election judges were named for a number of traditionally Democratic precincts, which meant that people who had been judges for years quit rather than serve as election clerks.

Yes, some Democrats backed out. It did happen, and it will happen in the fall election, too, Parra said.

But Republican Party Sec retary David Thackston said his party also had trou ble recruiting judges this year, especially in those otherwise Democratic pre cincts.

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-- (Dee360Degree@aol.com), March 15, 2000