By Rachel Brahinsky

Ross Mirkarimi slowly walked up Van Ness Avenue in a gray suit, with a furrowed brow, looking grim. It was election night, around 9 p.m., and Mirkarimi, manager of the Yes on D and Chris Daly for Supervisor campaigns, had just left San Francisco City Hall, where elections staffers were scrambling to explain why possibly dozens of precincts had run out of ballots before the polls were supposed to close.

For Mirkarimi, and many others, the night was beginning to feel a little too much like last November's election, when then-Elections Department director Tammy Haygood ordered ballots to be processed outside City Hall and evaded questions – leaving the press and the public to wonder whether the move could have opened the door to ballot tampering. Later reports that ballot-box tops were found floating in the bay and that the department hadn't necessarily ensured adequate ballot security only increased such suspicions (see "Elections Debacle?," 11/11/01).

The Elections Commission fired Haygood this past spring, after she spent $5.6 million over her budget on extras, including top-dollar P.R. consultants hired to polish her image after the 2001 fiasco.

Now fallout from this year's mistake – with pressure from Mayor Willie Brown and other Haygood supporters – could potentially threaten acting director John Arntz's position. Haygood is still fighting in court to get her job back.

That's why last week, as Arntz led his maiden ballot count, elections watchers were looking for signs of a Haygood-esque debacle. And at first, the ballot shortage appeared to be exactly that. Mirkarimi's assessment seemed to sum up what most progressives were feeling as they watched Sup. Gavin Newsom's antihomeless initiative win and public power Proposition D lose: "It's gut-wrenching all over again," he said. "And painful. And too familiar."

But in the end, Arntz kept precincts open late and said every voter who had arrived by 8 p.m. would be allowed to vote. And unlike Haygood, he communicated with the media all night long. So far, there's no real evidence that votes weren't counted or that voters were denied their rights.

So just what happened election night? With 22 state, local, and federal offices to vote for, 18 judges to confirm, and 27 initiatives to weigh in on, the ballot itself was massive. "Each precinct gets 300 ballots to start. That's 88 pounds of material," elections spokesperson Francee Covington told us. Covington said the department printed enough of the four-page ballots to meet a 75 percent voter turnout, as required by state law.

The ballot choices were apparently overwhelming to some. Arntz said spoilage – meaning, the number of ballots that couldn't be used because of voter error – was extremely high. So precincts churned through that 88-pound stack far faster than expected. Until staffers complete a canvass of the vote, expected by the end of the month, it will be unclear how much spoilage there really was.

Then, right around rush hour, when masses of voters began to descend on the city's polling places, the problems began. Under a new department policy, certain elections staffers were scheduled to end their shifts and were replaced by sheriff's deputies at the end of the day. That switch was happening just when many precincts called in, asking for more ballots to meet the sudden demand. So as the panicked calls for help came in, it took too long to respond.

Adding to the confusion: district lines were redrawn last spring, and many voters went to the wrong polling place.

But despite the snafu, there was a notable difference in the way this year's election was handled. Last year Haygood literally ran away from questioning reporters when the problems began to emerge. She hid important information about where ballots were and how they were being guarded. When the volume of questions about her procedures grew too big, she held a pep rally-style press conference in City Hall to show the press that, despite the complaints, her staff supported her.

This year Arntz, even as his own fiasco unfolded before him, seemed earnestly intent on getting information out (despite what you may read in the San Francisco Examiner). When he didn't know the answer to a question, he admitted it. Later in the week, at a Saturday afternoon press conference releasing the latest ballot count, Arntz looked tired yet stood until every question had been answered.

Arntz says he overestimated the problem election night, at first calculating as many as 100 precincts were short of ballots; now he says it was probably far fewer. The exact number should be clear within the next few days. But whether Arntz stays or goes, there's already a welcome change in the local election process: leadership that's willing to look bad in the interest of telling the public what's happening.
E-mail Rachel Brahinsky at rachel@sfbg.com.