An anti-establishment Internet Web site
is asserting possible voting irregularities in Tulare County because
three fringe candidates for governor received
huge chunks of their statewide totals here.
Hiley Wallis, manager of the Tulare County
elections division, said it's surely a case of voter error in the polling
booth.
"I truly believe that people just filled in the wrong oval," Wallis said.
The names of the three fringe candidates
were on the ballot just to the right of the top major candidates,
Arnold Schwarzenegger, Cruz Bustamante
and Tom McClintock.
Lines separates three columns of names, Wallis noted, but some voters evidently missed it.
"People are in a rush," Wallis said.
Candidate Randall Sprague got 995 votes
in Tulare County, 34% of his statewide total.
His name was next to Tom McClintock's.
Jerome Kunzman got 694 votes here, 32% of
his statewide total.
His name was next to Cruz Bustamante's.
Ronald Palmieri got 546 votes here, 26%
of his statewide total. He's openly gay, and his platform was
"Vote no on the recall -- Don't vote for
me." His name was next to Arnold Schwarzenegger's.
The "Bartcop.com" Web site alleges that
Tulare County's computer voting system might have been hacked
to "skim Bustamante votes to 'fringe' candidates."
Wallis said the elections office guards
against computer error. One of those checks is a hand count of 1%
of the ballots to match the hand count
against the computer count. That takes place today.
Lewis Griswold's column runs Wednesday,
Friday and Sunday.
He can be reached at lgriswold@fresnobee.com
or 559-622-2416.
So, basically Tulare County "pulled a Florida" and had people
voting for unintended candidates.
The next question should be, "How many other California counties
had confusing ballots?"
Obviously something went wrong, and having no chance to inspect
the ballots, all we could do was
speculate what might have occured. At least the writer, Lewis
Griswold, got his facts straight.
I didn't know there were any honest reporters left.