San Diego County to Use Paper Ballots in Presidential Primary

By Alison St John / Reporter, KPBS Public Broadcasting

Published August 6, 2007 at 2:16 PM PDT

This story was published more than 17 years ago.

San Diego's Registrar of Voters is sorting out the changes she'll have to make to comply with the Secretary of State's new conditions for electronic voting machines. KPBS reporter Alison St John has d

San Diego's Registrar of Voters is sorting out the changes she'll have to make to comply with the Secretary of State's new conditions for electronic voting machines. KPBS reporter Alison St John has details.

San Diego’s Registrar of Voters, Deborah Seiler, says three quarters of the Diebold touch-screen voting machines bought by the County for $30 million will have to stay in storage. Seiler says she is still analyzing the new conditions placed on electronic voting, but one thing is clear.

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Seiler : The bottom line is that we know that for the 2008 elections -- except for one unit in each polling place that will be used by people with disabilities -- we are going to be voting on paper.

Seiler says all the electronic ballots submitted by the disabled using touch-screen machines will have to be counted by hand. Everyone else will have their paper ballots counted probably by optical scan, though she is still analyzing the consequences of [Secretary of State Debra] Bowen’s decision.

Seiler says San Diego County also plans to encourage more people to vote absentee, which allows voters to send in their paper ballots to be counted early.

Alison St John KPBS News.

Alison St John

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Alison St John currently serves as a general assignment reporter and occasionally co-hosts KPBS Midday Edition. She fell in love with KPBS Radio when she arrived in San Diego in 1985 and first heard NPR. She has been a voice on KPBS Radio since 1989, and has served as a news reporter for radio, TV and the web, as well as anchoring, hosting, producing and editing. Alison has reported on stories about North County and was based in the KPBS' North County Bureau. Alison covered the metro beat during the critical period of the San Diego City pension crisis, and the education beat while Alan Bersin was the controversial Superintendent of San Diego City School District. She covered health when the industry was converting to managed care and told welfare reform stories in the late 1990s when Clinton was “ending welfare as we know it.” She has covered land use issues extensively, looking at the challenges of meeting a growing population while preserving community character, and developing a better transportation system to meet environmental concerns. She has done many stories on the military in San Diego, and the series she edited on the challenges veterans face returning from active duty to civilian life won “Best of Show” from the San Diego Society of Professional Journalists. She occasionally hosts the KPBS Roundtable and KPBS Midday Edition. Alison has won awards from the San Diego Press Club, the Society of Professional Journalists, the Associated Press TV and Radio Association, and the California Golden Mike Awards. Alison was born in Tanzania, brought up in Scotland, and earned her degree in psychology and sociology from Durham University in England. Her postgraduate diploma is in student counseling. She worked in England, Nigeria, Switzerland, Belgium, India, and Japan before moving to the United States in 1981. She now lives in Oceanside and enjoys how her community is growing and changing.