"We kind of foresaw this would be a problem a while ago," he said. "Seeing that was going to be a problem, we got the message out."
Even so, Drugan acknowledged that his office had received a number of calls from irate and panic-stricken voters worried that they had not marked the party bubble.
"Is it a perfect system?" he asked. "No, it is not. Elections are an imperfect beast."
In Orange County, some independents hoping to cast votes in the Democratic primary were nearly thwarted because they were unknowingly given nonpartisan ballots.
Amy McLain, a Buena Park registered nurse and independent voter who intended to vote for Obama, did not know she had to ask for a Democratic ballot. Just as she began to vote, she realized the candidates' names were absent and was able to persuade poll workers to give her a Democratic ballot.
But her husband, Robert McLain, a Cal State Fullerton history professor who is also an independent, did not realize he had been given a ballot without presidential candidates until he had voted on ballot measures. By then it was too late to cancel his vote and start over, poll workers told him.
"He is furious that no one told him that if you intend to vote in the Democratic primary, you need a Democratic [ballot]," she said.
Voters said at least two Los Angeles-area polling places had not opened Tuesday morning when they showed up to cast their ballots. At the Westside Jewish Community Center on Olympic Boulevard, officials didn't get voting equipment until 12:20 p.m. -- more than five hours after the polls opened. At Immaculate Heart of Mary Church in Los Angeles, the doors were locked until 11 a.m.
An apparent glitch in registration left an unknown number of students at USC either unable to vote or casting provisional ballots that might not count.
Despite such problems, election officials said the California vote was proceeding well overall.
"With every election we do hear of pockets of confusion," said Nicole Winger, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state. "This time around we are again hearing of some isolated incidents, but the election is running smoothly across the state."
Around the nation, election monitors said they had received only scattered reports of problems, though it was too early to assess how seriously they might have affected voting. In Tennessee, a handful of counties had to close polls early because of tornadoes; in Missouri, high winds caused delays.
One of the oddest voting irregularities occurred In Illinois, where voters at a Chicago precinct were given styluses designed for touch-screen machines instead of ink pens. When voters complained the devices made no marks on their paper ballots, a ballot judge told them the markers were full of invisible ink, the Associated Press reported.
"After 20 people experienced the same problem, somebody said, 'Wait, we've got 20 ballots where nobody's voted for anything,' " said Board of Elections spokesman Jim Allen. Officials were trying to contact the voters. Allen said both the voters and the ballot judge believed the invisible ink theory.
--
richard.paddock@latimes.com
Times staff writers Ralph Vartabedian, Tony Barboza and Patrick McGreevy contributed to this report.
