An elections official said she has received between five and 10 complaints about Tuesday's judge of elections at precinct 25 in the HUB-Robeson Center -- College Democrats President Enrique Ortiz.

Centre County Elections Office department clerk Jodi Neidig, who was in charge of recruiting elections officers for the HUB, said she "can guarantee" Ortiz will never work for Centre County during another election. She said she was "extremely disappointed" in the way precinct 25 was run as a whole.

Ortiz, speaking on behalf of himself and not the College Democrats, said the HUB polling place was "horribly run" and an "abomination of democracy," but placed the blame squarely on the county elections office, which he said is staffed by "incompetent losers." He said Joyce McKinley, the elections director, should be fired.

Ortiz added that McKinley is trying to blame students for what the elections office did wrong, such as nearly allowing a student to vote twice Tuesday.

"[McKinley] knows her job is at stake, and she's trying to shift the blame to the students," he said. "It's a public relations move."

Neidig said she would have rather had poll workers from Bellefonte Area High School working the polls on Election Day than "some of the college students we had."

She said the county recruited elections poll workers from the political science department, in hopes that they would take their duties seriously.

"No longer using students [as poll workers] -- that's a huge possibility," she said. "Some students took it seriously and did a good job, but it's obvious that some just thought it was a huge joke."

Ed Lundgren (senior-political science), a poll worker for precinct 24 in the HUB, sent a letter to Neidig complaining about Ortiz.

Lundgren said that perhaps students should not be trusted to operate polling places.

"If it's going to be like this, then yeah, maybe they shouldn't use students," he said. "There were enough instances that I can see where Centre County would be concerned about using students."

Lundgren said Ortiz's actions "reflected poorly on the Penn State population as a whole."

He said Ortiz spent little time at the polling place, where he was supposed to be all day. Instead, Lundgren said Ortiz spent most of his time in other areas of the HUB, coordinating the College Democrats' "get out the vote" campaign.

Lundgren added that although Ortiz ran the polls poorly, he did nothing to "sway voters" inside the polling place.

There were times when none of precinct 25's poll workers were present, so poll workers from other precincts had to run it, Lundgren said.

"We're not children. We say we're adults; we say we're productive members of society," he said. "Then we complain that people who aren't in college look down on us. It's incidents like this that reinforce a negative view of college students."

Precinct 25 had 29 voters all day, according to unofficial election results released by the elections office.

Ortiz said replacing students as poll workers is not the answer to Election Day problems.

"The election in 2008 is way too important," he said. "What we need to do is replace the leadership."