Election Day in South City: Photos

Several polling center volunteers in South City reported a steady stream of voters, peaking in the early morning and around midday, with no significant setbacks with voting machines or other technical difficulties.

Grace Covenant Church on Del Monte Ave. had a couple of voters waiting 15 minutes before the doors opened at 7 a.m. on Tuesday. The church, and several other polling places in South City saw lines between 7 and 8:30 a.m.

Mike Lachenmyer, a South City resident and the poll inspector at Fire Station 65 on South San Francisco Drive said about 150 voters had used the machines by early afternoon.

"But so many more poeple are voting by mail now," he said. Lachenmyer expected that polling places would see fewer people vote in person this year than 4 years ago at the last presidential election.

According to a CBS article from Tuesday, a Field Poll predicted that this would be the first general election in which California mail-in voters would exceed in-person votes, although by a mere one percent.

Some poll workers at the Westborough Rec Building on Galway Drive in South City estimated that more voters had used either a paper ballot, provisional, or dropped off a mail-in ballot, than had used a machine.

But overall, more people seemed to be turning out to vote in some form than in recent years, according to Diane Wilson, the inspector at Westborough Rec.

Christine Yee, 17, a student poll worker at Grace Covenant Church, will not be old enough to vote in a presidential election until 2016. Yee said that because her parents recently gained citizenship, this year is the first that they have the opportunity to vote for a U.S. president.

"It would be nice if I could vote in this election," she said. "So we could do it together."

Patch caught up with South San Francisco city councilmember Mark Addiego outside a polling place on Tuesday afternoon. In light of the election day, we asked what had motivated his own run for office.

After serving as a council member and two terms as mayor in the 80's, Addiego ran successfully again in 2005. His current term ends in 2013.

The council member said he was motivated for a second tenure in 2005 because he saw an insular city government and wanted to "shake things up."

"I'm a [political] junky," he said. "Even if we have 200 people in the audience and they're angry, that's a good thing. That's democracy."

Check Patch for live election results Tuesday night or final tallies on Wednesday.

Are you a poll worker or voter who had difficulty at the polls in South City on election day or want to share an election experience? Write in the comments section below.

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