Students who voted in-person at Isla Vista and UC Santa Barbara polling places on Election Day on Nov. 5 faced hour-long lines and were told to vote at other polling places in the area. Several polling places ran out of provisional English-language ballots and faced equipment issues, according to several voters and poll workers.
Voters faced long lines, ballot shortages and equipment issues on Election Day on Nov. 5. Shengyu Zhang / Daily Nexus
Roughly 200 English-language ballots were provided to each polling place, which are designated for voters who don’t have mail-in ballots on hand. The Isla Vista Community Center (IVCC) began running out of its English-language ballots at 12 p.m., and for roughly three hours, they had to use electronic voting machines or Spanish-language ballots, Isla Vista Community Services District (IVCSD) Director Spencer Brandt said.
“This flies in the face of how the process works. So we were very confused because voters have an assigned polling location in Santa Barbara County,” Brandt said, who volunteered with the Santa Barbara County Democratic Party on Election Day.
The Santa Barbara County (SBC) Elections Office did not respond to requests for comment.
Lines began forming at 8:30 a.m. at the IVCC polling place. While there were four polling places in I.V., the majority of I.V. voters went to IVCC to vote in person. The lines grew throughout the day until polling closed at 8 p.m. Ballots were replenished at the IVCC and St. Michael’s Church around 3 p.m.
“I heard from two voters who … were sent to go look for another polling location to vote at instead of their assigned one, since there weren’t ballots for them there,” IVCSD General Manager Jonathan Abboud said, who had been delivering supplies throughout Isla Vista that day as a Santa Barbara County Democratic Party volunteer.
Brandt called the elections office at 8 a.m. and 9 a.m. on Election Day regarding ballot issues but did not hear back. The SBC Elections Office responded in an email later that day saying they would look into the issue but provided no further details, Brandt alleged.
At noon on Nov. 5, counsel for Yes on Measure P campaign Sean Welch sent a formal request to the Registrar of Voters asking for extended poll hours to ensure residents could vote. He did not get a response back, according to Brandt. The SBC Elections Office did not respond to requests for comment from the Nexus.
“I was frustrated that voters were having to wait in long lines to vote for what seemed to be preventable reasons to me. We heard from a volunteer of ours who waited in line for one hour to vote. That, to me, is not acceptable,” Brandt said.
IVCC also experienced issues with technology. At 7 a.m., when the polls were slated to open, the IVCC reportedly faced issues with its equipment disconnecting and failing, Brandt said. Some polling places faced delays due to in-system issues where voters were flagged as being within an incorrect geographic location despite being in their assigned precinct.
Precincts or voting districts are designated areas within which voters go to an assigned polling place to cast their votes.
Sandy Shertzer, a retired attorney and long-time poll supervisor who worked at the Sierra Madre Villages polling place, believes the issue stemmed from precinct areas around UCSB not being properly coded into the voter information system.
He also believes part of the holdup at several polling places was due to voters asking for a provisional ballot or to use the electronic voting machine despite having a mail-in ballot.
“A lot of arrogant people with misinformation, without knowledge, who are pretty stupid, would come in and say, ‘I don’t want to use my mail-in ballot. I want a real ballot,’” Shertzer said. “I’d say about 30% of the people walking in with a ballot asked for a new paper ballot because ‘this one isn’t good.’”
According to an unofficial unprocessed ballot report on Nov. 5, the elections office estimated that there are 50,620 total unprocessed ballots in SBC, compared to 135,992 cumulative processed ballots. Of those ballots, 1,000 provisional ballots were unprocessed.
Around 10,00 people voted in-person in Isla Vista and UCSB during the 2016 general election, the last election with comparable in-person voting due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, Brandt said.
“The data shows people in Isla Vista have voted in person on election day for generations, and it’s incredibly frustrating to me that that was not something that was anticipated for and foreseen, and I think that the community deserves answers,” Brandt said.
A version of this article appeared on p. 1 of the Nov. 14, 2024 edition of the Daily Nexus.
