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CBS 5 Exclusive: SF Election Building Unsafe

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Sep 22, 2007 3:42 am US/Pacific

CBS 5 Exclusive: SF Election Building Unsafe

Linda Yee
Reporting

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS 5) ―

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CBS 5 took an exclusive tour of an unsafe, decrepit building that houses some of San Francisco's most important documents: voter ballots.

It's a building that has been condemned and violates city safety codes. It is located right across from City Hall, and it's where San Francisco stores its election ballots.

San Francisco Elections chief John Arntz said that is a problem.

"It's in a building with no fire sprinklers," Arntz explained.

An accidental fire means no ballots for the November election. They already had one fire when an old light sparked.

There are other problems. Steel bracing holds up one wall. The Fire Marshal, OSHA and the Planning Department sent violation notices.

Then there are the security issues. Used needles in the back lot prove the chained cyclone fence does nothing to keep people out.

"They always find a way to cut the fence, to get inside," said elections department worker Alan Samara, " They've tried to make a hole and go inside."

It gets worse. The roughly 10,000 square foot space under the Bill Graham Auditorium is where the most important election documents are stored, the voter's ballots after the election. The area where the ballots are kept is only surrounded by an eight-foot tall cyclone fence.

There are no fire sprinklers here, either. No protection for the only paper records of an election. This year the ballots will be stored longer, because voting machine problems will delay election results.

"No one is happy about this," said Mayor Gavin Newsom. "It does expose other issues… but to me that's secondary to the fundamental fact people want to know the results of their decision, and they're not going to get it."

Newsom blames the Board of Supervisors for refusing to approve another voting machine company last spring, forcing the city to keep a system that is outmoded, and not in compliance with California's new voting machine restrictions.

But Arntz said the bottom line is money. There is none to fix the problems. The room where the ballots are stored also shares space with decaying books that make the air thick with mold, and make election workers sick.

And they don't expect anything to change before the next big election, the presidential primary in February. They shudder to think what could happen to those ballots.

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