LA County Registrar: 'All Hands On Deck' To Address Voting Machine Issues Before November

LOS ANGELES (CBSLA) - The Los Angeles County Registrar's Office is promising changes after a David Goldstein investigation last year criticized their new election machines.

The report put the blame on the electronic poll books that are used to check in voters. But critics say the entire system can be faulted with the presidential election five months away.

The trouble in March led to long lines at the polls and questions about the Registrar's computerized machines, which cost taxpayers $330 million.

The report ordered by the Board of Supervisors found longer wait times primarily resulted from technical issues with the electronic poll books that are used to check-in voters and issues synchronizing data with the voter database.

It put less blame on the actual voting machines, but found more than 5% had to be taken out of service because they had failed.

Radio talk show host Brad Friedman, a critic of electronic machines, said, "It doesn't really matter which computer failed if people can't vote. That's what happened March third and I suspect that will happen on November third."

L.A. County Registrar Dean Logan said, "We are heads down, all hands on deck working...to address the action plans in our report." More poll books will be added in November and technical issues will be addressed.

But Friedman says it's still an experimental machine that's prone to problems.

"It's kind of insane," he said. "We're going to use the voters of LA County as guinea pigs in a beta test for a system that should have never been used in the first place."