San Francisco voters got their third chance to cast their vote via the city’s optical-scan ballot method in Tuesday’s recall election. The equipment developed by ES&S Technology eliminates the problem of the punch card balloting used in other California counties that civil rights groups predict could cause voter accuracy problems.

But many residents are still warming up to the relatively new process.

“I like the method from the last presidential election. It’s a lot easier. You just have to punch ‘yes’ or ‘no,’” said Katie Hubbard, a junior majoring in English. “The new method is confusing at first.”

Some older residents also had a hard time with the method.

“Some people didn’t know what to mark or where to mark the arrow, mostly the elderly population,” said Mel Brooks, 17, of San Francisco, a high school volunteer poll worker at a Mr. Rooter store on Judah Street. “But most younger voters got it. You just fill in the arrow.”

The voting method wasn't the only cause of difficulty. Other voters had problems voting because of the cluttered ballot, filled with more than 100 candidates.

“People had a hard time because it wasn’t alphabetical. It was hard to find a name,” Brooks said. “There were only four things to vote on and people were spending 10 minutes thinking, ‘where the hell is my candidate?’”

With the optical-scan method, voters fill in the empty portion of an arrow pointing to their preferred option on the ballot with a special marker. Scanners used to analyze the ballot are similar to those that are used to grade standardized state tests and the SATs.

The new system was introduced in 2001 after the 2000 presidential election and the controversy that followed about voting counts, stemming from the infamous “hanging chads” left over from traditional punch ballot cards.

In late September, the American Civil Liberties Union filed a lawsuit hoping for a temporary stay against the state to block the recall, claiming residents in counties that still used older methods were disenfranchised. A 3-judge panel from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals first granted a stay, but a full 11-member panel from the court ruled against the stay on Sept. 23, saying voters had a state constitutional right to a recall in the quickest time possible.