In response to long lines and delays at campus voting sites in the Nov. 2 election, A.S. officers are preparing complaints to the San Diego County Office of the Registrar and the California secretary of state to urge organizational reforms in future elections.

“There were a lot of problems with the election day,” A.S. Vice President External Rigo Marquez said.

A.S. President Jenn Pae also said that there were issues with the setup of polling sites, calling the situation “unacceptable.”

Both blame the Office of the Registrar for most of the problems. Marquez said the office was first unhelpful over the summer, when he submitted materials for newly registered voters.

“They were just like, ‘You just gave me a lot of work to do,’” Marquez said. “San Diego in general was not prepared.”

County Registrar Sally McPherson cited “big registration drives at the last minute” as the reason for the long waits on Nov. 2. According to Pae, UCSD reached its goal of registering 3,000 new voters.

McPherson also said too many students voted outside of their own precincts.

“[There were] a lot of provisional voters,” McPherson said. “[Provisional ballots] take a long time to process.”

However, Marquez said that students who voted out of their precincts should not necessarily have been given provisional ballots. Instead, poll workers should have told students to go to the correct precinct, according to Marquez.

“For a poll worker, the easiest answer is to give them a provisional ballot,’” Marquez said. “[But] we really discourage students from [casting provisional ballots].”

Student organizers were also angry at the way the registrar’s office responded to the large crowds. McPherson said that she arranged to send more polling booths and ballots, but, according to Marquez, the registrar’s office only doubled the amount of booths at each site from the initial five to 10, which was not adequate enough to make the lines move faster.

“It just won’t happen again,” Marquez said. “Jenn [Pae] and I are both writing letters to the San Diego registrar’s office and to the secretary of state [to say] how disappointed we were.”

Pae said that, in the future, students organizers will try to arrange for polling to take place at one location on campus, where lines will be divided by precinct. She and Marquez both said that they want to ensure that poll workers are UCSD students.

“Having students be the poll workers — be the overseers — is going to be a lot more helpful,” Marquez said.

Marquez said that future elections will also be less hectic because the number of expected voters will be better calculated.

“In the past, we haven’t had many students come out and vote, so two polling places sufficed,” Marquez said. “[Now the registrar’s office] realizes that students are voting.”

McPherson also said there would be changes at the next election as a result of high voter turnout on Nov. 2.

“[We’ll take voter turnout] into consideration when allocating resources at the next election,” McPherson said.

Under California state law there must be one polling site for every 1,250 registered voters, according to McPherson.

The deadline to request a polling site for a precinct is 88 days before the election. The only way to change the number of polling locations is if there is a change in population of the county, not registered voters, said Caren Daniels-Meade, a spokeswoman for the secretary of state’s office.

She also said that the situation at UCSD was not unique.

“Across the country, it was a very high-turnout election,” McPherson said. “[College] campuses [were] most affected because of the large number of provisional ballots.”

While the long lines were inconvenient for students, the courts have not yet ruled whether they pass constitutional muster, according to UC Davis law professor Chris Elmendorf.

“Some law professors believe that unequally long lines in different places might be unconstitutional, under the ‘equal protection’ holding of the famous U.S. Supreme Court opinion in Bush v. Gore, which decided the 2000 election,” Elmendorf said. “But I don’t think that question has been litigated.”

Daniels-Meade said that long lines at polling places did not violate any laws.

“People always have the option of voting absentee and don’t have to stand in line at all,” Daniels-Meade said. “[There are] no legal grounds to challenge an election based on long lines.”