Sunrise Senior Living Precinct Sees Brisk Turnout

Voting at the Sunrise Senior Center was proceeding apace, presided over by Precinct Inspector Barbara Cooke, decked out in star spangled red, white and blue.

Marcello Lazcano, a Chilean national, has made sure to vote in every election since he became an American citizen in 2008. Out of work for a couple of months, he's hoping his choices will influence the way financial decisions are made in California and the nation.

"Two years ago I had a preference in terms of parties. Right now I don't really care. If both major parties just work together we can get something done," Lazcano says.  He admits, however, that he found the propositions confusing.

Ali, a surgeon, emigrated to the U.S. as a child with his family from Iran. His is adamant that "if you don't vote you're not entitled to an opinion." His friends have declared the system broken and so decline to participate. "You can't fix it if you don't vote," Ali declares.

Alice, a recent transplant from Illinois, registered to vote as soon as she relocated. She votes in every election and if she's not familiar with the candidates, she votes her party.

According to Sunrise Executive Director David Bernal, residents were registered to vote on site but not many of them actually came down to the poll.  On resident's son was there to bring his mother down but the pair didn't return while I was observing.

Meantime, the precinct had to deal with "technical difficulties" that took some phone calls to rectify but which didn't slow down the voting process at all. The InkaVote machine got unplugged from the wall and was slow to power back on.

"All that machine does," precinct clerk Paul Forrest Cooke tells me, "is it checks, one, that you've not over-voted and it checks, two, that you've not cast a blank ballot."

Cooke, the precinct inspector's son, tells me that the machine breakdown presents no problem at all.  "There's a slot in the back of the machine that you can put ballots in manually and there'll be nothing wrong with that at all."

Judy Durning, camera shy though wearing a stars and stripes scarf tied in a festive bow around her neck, explained she is voting because she wants "to restore our government and our country."

"I'm hoping that the new breed of conservative concerned candidates get in," she asserts.

Mark St. George finds all the candidates and propositions compelling. "I feel kind of strongly about the environment, and good government, efficient government.  There are some individuals in office that need to be replaced."