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Suppose they held an election in Berkeley, but no one showed up to open the polls? 

That’s the situation the city was facing ten days ago, when Alameda County Administrator Susan Muranishi informed Berkeley City Manager Phil Kamlarz that Berkeley was short 90 poll workers, and did not have enough staff to open three separate polling places. Muranishi listed the Westminster House, the YWCA Main Lounge, and the 515 Arlington Ave. polling places as the three in jeopardy. 

Since that time, enough new workers have signed up that city precincts are now only about 10 short, and the three problem polling places are close to full staffs. 

According to acting Alameda County Registrar of Voters Elaine Ginnold, “whatever people have been doing out there to get the word out about the staffing problems, it’s working.” She said that county employees were recruited, and Berkeley High School students, especially, were helpful in filling the unmet polling place needs. 

Election workers are coordinated through the office of the county Registrar of Voters. 

A spokesperson in the California Secretary of State’s office, Nghia Nguyen, said that their office had been requested to help recruit poll workers for three other counties in addition to Alameda: Santa Clara, San Diego, and Butte. Nguyen said that such requests for assistance are “normal” and are made by different counties throughout the state during every election, and she did not believe that the staffing problems were especially related to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s special election. 

The problem in getting poll workers, Alameda County’s Ginnold said, is “an extremely long day, a lot of responsibility, particularly for inspectors, and the pay is low.” 

Polling clerks and judges are expected to work from 6 a.m. until the votes are secured. Inspectors have the additional responsibility of running the polling place, including setting up the machines and opening them up, supervising the other workers, and making sure the votes are transmitted to the central counting station and the voting machines secured. 

Inspectors are paid $122.50 per election, while judges and clerks are paid $92.50. 

Ginnold said that the county is looking into increasing the pay rate for the primary election scheduled for next June. 

Next month’s election may—or may not—be the last in Alameda County using Diebold touchscreen machines. Those machines are operating under a state certification that expires at the end of the year. Voting machines used in any subsequent elections in California must operate with a verifiable paper trail, which the Alameda County Diebold machines do not possess. Ginnold said that Alameda County has already put out a Request For Proposal to election machine companies—including Diebold—for the new systems, with bids due in by Nov. 9. 

Concerns over the Diebold touchscreens has already had an effect, in part, on the November special election in Berkeley. 

Berkeley City Clerk Sara Cox said that because the county did not make paper ballots available for pre-election day voting at local precinct stations, the city would not exercise its option to conduct early voting at Berkeley City Hall as it has in previous years. 

“There is concern within the city about the Diebold touch screen machines, which would have been the only early voting procedure available to us,” Cox said. “We’re encouraging people to vote by absentee ballot if they want to vote before election day.” 

Cox said that in addition to the Diebold concerns, the city simply did not have the available staff to operate a pre-election polling place at City Hall. “We’d be pushed over the edge if we tried to do it,” she said. 

Cox said that as in the past, Berkeley voters during the special election will have the option of using a paper ballot in lieu of the Diebold machines at Berkeley precincts on election day. In addition, she said that voters wishing to cast pre-election votes on paper ballots on-site are able to do so at the registrar’s office at the county courthouse in Oakland.?