Vote Count Prospects

San Francisco Examiner, Aug. 15, 1965

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By FRANK PIAZZI

Next year's primary and general election ballots in the two East Bay counties in all likelihood will still be counted by the old fashioned one-at-a-time hand ballot counting system. 

Hope that modern, high speed, electronic computers would take over the chore of tallying the votes in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties seem to be fading.

The primary election s [sic] next June 7. The general election follows Nov. 8. 

WHICH MACHINES?

In Alameda County, Chairman John Murphy of the board of supervisors, who is also chairman of the Voting Machine Committee, may call a session of his committee within the next few weeks to try to reach a decision on which—if any—of the two finalist voting machines to buy: 

• The Cubic Votronic machine which scans handmarked ballots at high speed and tallies the results automatically, or
• The IBM system, which provides voters with IBM cards on which to punch out their voting preferencers. 

But if and when the committee and the supervisors decide on which vote tallying system to buy, financing the machines could be a problem.

The original $700,000 budgeted for this purpose was detoured to the Russell City redevelopment program, with the agreement that profits from this project would be returned to the voting machine fund. Those profits could take a long time in coming back.

NO SWIFT TALLY

Which would mean that there won't be any voting machines to do a swift tally of election results come next June's primary election. 

And in Contra Costa County, the board of supervisors only last week named supervisor Edmund Linscheid of Pittsburgh and James T. Moriarity of Lafayette, as a committee to look into the voting machine problem. Both men shield away from the chairmanship fo [sic] this committee, which could leave it either without a head or wit [sic] two heads and deadlocked on any firm decision.

STRONG FOE

Linscheid has been a strong foe of the Coleman ballot counting machine that was tried experimentally last year by Contra Costa County. The machine chewed up a few ballots in early operation, but operated well thereafter. However the ballot destruction caused great controversy and drew opposition from Linscheid. He said:

"This experiment was disastrous. It must not be repeated. There's only one tried and true system to count manually marked ballots. And that is trained election precinct workers who do the counting by hand and give us an accurate count. Not a machine that breaks down and gives us a rough 'estimate' of the vote."

Regardless of how soon this two - man committee meets, o [sic] what it decided, it isn't going to come up with voting machines for Contra Coste [sic] County's elections in 1966.

NO MONEY

There is no item in the budget for voting machines and no money available as yet. 

All of which adds up to no vote tallying by electronic computers in the East Bay next year, as of now. 

Thus results in the politica; races of candidates in national, state and county races may be long in coming out of Oakland and Martinez next year. 

Only swift—and firm—decisions to do something about voting machines within the next 30 days could change this picture. That is hardly likely. 

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