Columnist Ken McCall: Keys to success: More machines, smaller ballot

Ken McCall

Friday, Nov. 8, 1996 | 11:59 a.m.

T HERE'S NO doubt about it, the county definitely needed more voting machines Tuesday.

No way. There wouldn't have been any lines if the Legislature hadn't loaded the ballot with enough legal junk to sink a frigate.

Wrong again, ballot boy. We'd all have gone home on time if some of those idiots had just done their homework.

Call it post-election pinball. Everybody's taking shots at explaining what caused those extraordinarily long lines Tuesday.

County officials point to the burdensome ballot, which forced voters to play 20 questions and hack through a jungle of judge races, besides cast the votes they knew something about and cared about.

Secretary of State Dean Heller and other critics, meanwhile, decry the dearth of voting machines, which they say drove away thousands of voters.

Heller said he visited polling places in Carson City, and Douglas, Washoe and Clark counties and only found long lines here. If the state questions were the problem, he asked, why didn't it hold the other voting places up?

"It had nothing to do with the ballots," Heller said.

In addition, many folks in line Tuesday were grousing about the people taking so long to cast their ballots.

One poll worker, for example, reported that an elderly woman spent an entire hour casting her vote.

It's amazing nobody jumped in there and strangled her.

So what was it? A, B, C or All of the Above?

Crunch some numbers and it's hard to argue with the logic that angrily buzzed through many polling places Tuesday night:

Why aren't there more machines? There should be more machines!

Two years ago, the county decided to buy 1,300 machines, one for every 250 registered voters.

Registrar of Voters Kathryn Ferguson said she had to rely on the recommendations from the voting machine vendor, Sequoia Pacific, based on its experience across the country.

Actually, Ferguson said, the company salesman recommended buying 1,200 -- but she threw in 100 more to be safe.

That would have been fine if we'd held this election 18 months ago when there were 322,679 registered voters. But as everybody involved with urban planning knows, you have to hit the ground here in high gear.

By the time November 1996 rolled around, we had 110,000 more voters registered -- and that's not including the inactive folks who have probably moved away.

Do the math: 432,581 active registered voters divided by 1,300 equals 333 people per machine -- 33 percent over the original target.

In the fastest-growing areas, such as the northwest, the numbers soared much higher.

Out at Eisenberg Elementary School, for example, there were only eight machines for 3,804 registered voters. That's 475.5 per machine. It's no wonder they had lines more than three hours long and were the last polling place to close.

At Desert Vista Community Center in Sun City, where many of the natives were restless, the ratio was 380 registered voters per machine.

Nevertheless, Ferguson and a chorus of other county voices were asserting that if it weren't for the long ballot and unprepared voters, there would have been plenty to go around.

And you know what? Do some more math and you find out they're right, too.

Even at beleaguered Eisenberg, where the last vote was cast at 10:15 p.m., if the voters had managed to shave just one minute off their average voting time, there would have been no problem.

The 1,566 intrepid folks who cast ballots at the school near Buffalo Drive and Cheyenne Avenue averaged just more than 4 1/2 minutes each. One minute less per voter and there'd have been time for another 76 ballots before the official closing time at 7 p.m.

At Desert Vista, where they averaged a half-minute slower but had one more machine, the same would have true. They could have accommodated 97 more than the 1,523 who voted Tuesday without staying late.

So, like most of real life, it's not a matter of black and white.

Neither is the solution.

Deputy County Manager Randy Walker bristled at Heller's assertions and comparisons of Clark to other counties.

"Length of the ballot absolutely had an impact," Walker said. "And we have as many voters in some polling places as some counties have in their whole county."

Still, Walker admitted, the county will definitely be in the market for more machines before the 1998 general election.

If they'd had just two more machines per polling place, he figures, they'd have been in much better shape. The math on that works out, too. Even for Eisenberg.

Well, there would have been 24 people waiting in line at 7 p.m. But that's a heck of a lot better than the 300-plus who were there after-hours Tuesday.

The tougher math involves the cost of new machines. To meet Walker's minimum would require 310 machines at an estimated cost of $1.6 million. To bring the county up to 250 current voters to machine would require 431 machines at $2.3 million.

I can hear the howling now.

Walker emphasized that problems encountered during the primary had been eliminated and the county was nearing the top of the learning curve.

"We have to build on the good parts and have enough machines to meet the need," he said. "I'm sure the County Commission is committed to doing that."