Balloting Difficulties Kept to a Minimum

Despite fears that a marathon ballot jampacked with complex issues might cause aggravating delays at polling places, voting in San Diego County proceeded smoothly Tuesday, with only the typical Election Day snafus reported around the region.

First projections placed the voter turnout at 65%--considerably below the 75% average registered here in the last two presidential elections. But that figure could rise after late returns and absentee ballots are tabulated today.

“The phone’s been ringing off the hook, and we’ve had the standard complaints from people who lost their registration or couldn’t find their polling place,” said Keith Boyer, assistant registrar of voters. “But, all in all, it’s been smooth sailing.”

The registrar of voter’s office credited the high number of absentee voters in San Diego--an estimated 20% of the projected turnout--with relieving much of the anticipated strain on the polls.

Voters Prepared

But volunteers at polling places from Rancho Bernardo to Encanto speculated that another phenomenon was at work Tuesday: Like well-trained Boy Scouts, voters this year seemed more prepared to cast their ballots and in most cases were in and out of the voting booth in minutes.

“Almost every person who came in brought a sample ballot, so it took them no time at all to vote,” said John Sealey, a retiree and North Park polling inspector working his fourth election. “Everything was so confusing this year that they just had to do a little more work beforehand.”

Interviews at polling places throughout the county confirmed Sealey’s assessment. Bewildered at first by the confusing menu of state propositions and the dizzying array of local measures, many voters said they boned up for their encounter with the ballot with unprecedented diligence.

“My mom and I have been going over it for two or three days, just trying to understand all those propositions so we could be prepared,” Kim Harris, 24, said outside the Nazarene Church polling place in Southeast San Diego. “There’s never been an election where I spent this much time getting ready.”

Others said the complex issues at stake--from the myriad insurance reform proposals at the state level to rival growth-control measures and police misconduct review board plans in San Diego--made voting this year a particularly taxing experience. In some areas, voters were asked to decide as many as 40 state and local propositions.

“It was really overwhelming, and though we took the time to study the materials and make decisions, I’m sure there were people who threw up their hands and said forget it,” said Marcia Milliron, a North Park resident who works in real estate.

“It seems to me the Legislature really failed to do their job by not limiting how many propositions went on this ballot,” said her husband, Robert Milliron. “That made it tougher on the rest of us.”

Indeed, some voters confided that they were so confused by the blizzard of advertising surrounding many of the state propositions that, in the end, they automatically voted no or skipped right over them.

“Frankly, I was fed up,” said Louis P. Caffar, 71, a retired Rancho Bernardo resident. “You get bombarded with all the pros and cons about each proposition. I went through my sample ballot so many times. I kept changing my answers, yes, no, yes, no. I was running out of dots to mark.”

For others, however, voting was a joy. Shawn Sayasith, 28, recently became an American citizen, and Tuesday marked the first chance he had to exercise his constitutional right to cast a ballot.

“I’m going to hang on to this,” Sayasith said joyously, raising his “I Voted” sticker in the air as he emerged from the Nazarene Church on Market Street.

A lab technician for the Sweetwater Union School District, Sayasith said he spent “long hours” poring over his voter pamphlet, deciding which holes to punch.

“Lots of them were confusing . . . but I’m proud I took the time and did it,” he said. “This is a pretty exciting day.”

Election Day 1988 will also be memorable for two other voters at the Southeast San Diego polling place. James Griswould, 29, and William Fricke, 21, figure it cost them $15 or more to cast their ballots Tuesday. Why? Because they had to take a taxi to the polls.

Griswould, an accountant, and Fricke, a college student, said they moved recently from Southeast San Diego to North Park but had not had time to re-register, meaning their designated polling place was across town. Lacking transportation, the pair decided voting would be too big a hassle this year.

“Then while I was watching TV a Dukakis commercial came on, and I got chills,” said Griswould, an accountant. “So we decided we’d get a cab and go cast our votes.”

The fare, including the five minutes it took the two to punch their ballots, stood at $10.20 as the dedicated voters sped toward home.

For the most part, problems besetting Tuesday’s polling were mundane, Boyer said. There were phone calls from voters confused about the location of their polling place, and complaints from some who tried to vote but weren’t properly registered. At one school doubling as a polling place, campaign materials were lying improperly within full view of voters.

“We had one man from Alameda County who was down here on a family emergency who wanted to vote,” Boyer said. “But we had to tell him he couldn’t vote in San Diego.”

Another would-be voter, a Navy officer stationed in Ventura, marched into the registrar’s office and demanded to cast a ballot for president.

“He said he’d been told he could do that, even though he’s not registered in California or in any state, as far as I know,” Boyer said. “I checked with the State Department and the Department of Defense and told him he wasn’t eligible to vote. But he was up at the counter last I saw trying to call the Navy Department.”

Times staff writer Gene Yasuda contributed to this story.