Remember punch card ballots? These never-before-seen photos show SLO County election history
For years I've had a crystal clear memory of photographing election workers as they counted punch card ballots.
I recalled it in black and white, so that narrowed the search window down to the hand-developed film days — but there were still thousands of negative images in that time frame and finding a date remained elusive.
Then this week, I ran across a Mark Brown story describing scenes that fit with my memory and I looked up the page and the answer became obvious.
The pictures were never published.
Back in the print days of 1986, stories were assigned without knowing how much of a page would be available. Unlike today with unlimited internet space, a print page was finite. It could have a high advertising stack squeezing the news space.
This day, two-thirds of the page was locked down with a graphic of general election results and ads from the University Square shopping center (abundant free parking).
So this is the first time the 1986 images will be seen by the public — and I no longer have the vague feeling that my mind is missing a piece of memory.
Back then, the ballots were counted inside the former jail, on the fourth floor of the old courthouse, which was then the county computer center.
Here is an excerpt of Brown's story from Nov. 5, 1986:
"You want to see them unseal the ballot boxes to make sure there's no tampering? You want to watch as workers hand-count the write-in candidates? You want to watch as workers destroy the unused ballots so no one can add any last-minute votes for his candidate?
Come on down. You can look over their shoulders.
'The election process is totally open,' (SLO County Clerk Recorder Mitch) Cooney said. He'll even take you up to the fourth floor and let you watch the cards be fed into the computer while the tallies come out the other end. Nothing under the table here.
Same goes for getting the ballots to the Government Center. Armed sheriff's deputies go out with deputy county clerks to pick up the ballot boxes from polling places. Everyone signs for everything: 'It's handled just like currency,' Cooney explained. 'We can trace everybody who has touched these ballots.'
Not only does the job of counting the ballots have to be done quickly and openly, but it has to be done right the first time. It has worked so far. Recounts and spot-checks have always been perfect.
'We've never found even a single extra vote.' Cooney said. 'We've had recounts of the entire county and it has come out exact.'
The quotes are similar to those I have heard from subsequent clerk recorders, Julie Rodewald, Tommy Gong and Elaina Cano.
Having paper ballots provides a tangible record for recounts . Before the punch card system the county had used giant mechanical voting machines that did not provide a paper trail and were cumbersome to set and read. The machines would have been a nightmare to set for complex elections with many initiatives and candidates.
Warren Groshong wrote this story Aug. 29, 1975, about the new punch-card system.
Little voting machine replaces 700-pounder
San Luis Obispo County's voting system lost a lot of weight this week and picked up some speed.
The Board of Supervisors turned in the county's 700-pound voting machines for 550 ballot punchers that weigh 4 1/2 pounds each and 325 collapsible steel voting booths that weigh 33 pounds each.
On top of that, the old system was not adapted to the county's computer. The new system will be.
The new system, called Datavote, will furnish each voter with an envelope containing from one to four cards, depending on the size of the election.
Offices and candidates and issues will be printed on both sides of the cards. The voter also can write in the name of a candidate.
The voter slips the card into a holding tray, then slides a punching arm along the marking portion of the ballot card. A red arrow points to the name of the candidate selected. A simple depression of the lever punches a large, easily visible hole opposite the name of each candidate of the voter's choice.
The voter then places the cards back in the envelope and gives them to the precinct clerk.
After the election, the cards are taken to a central counting area in the courthouse and fed into a data processing system for quick tabulation.
The old Shoup Voting Machines , which the county had used for 15 years, produced total votes in each precinct quickly, but the county totals still had to be tabulated by hand. Under the new system, according to County Clerk Beth Wollam, individual voting cards will be run through a card counting device and then fed into the computer.
The present counter will take up to 400 cards a minute, but the county may decide, she said, to lease a different counter with a capacity of 1,000 cards a minute.
The system is faster than the voting machines, Mrs. Wollam said, "but we weren't looking for speed alone."
"Ease of use for the voter was one of the main considerations," she said. "We wanted something that was convenient for the voter, not just convenient for us."
In general, she said, the new system is simpler to operate than the voting machine, is quite tamper-proof and easy to understand.
"We feel that now we can get the ballot cards into the central office after an election just as quickly as we once received precinct results by phone before," Mrs. Wollam said.
Another advantage, she said, is that absentee ballots, marked by punching a card with a pencil point, also will be computerized.
Under the old voting machine system, absentee ballots had to be counted manually, Mrs. Wollam noted.
The new system also will cut down on the number of precinct workers needed. Under the old system, as many as six were needed in some precincts. In the new system, a maximum of four will be necessary, Mrs. Wollam said.
She said Diamond International, which manufactures the machines, will help implement the system free of charge.
