Victory: Double Bubble Votes Will Be Counted
|
|
| Also listed in: Election Protection California |
Great news! Dean Logan, the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters has agreed to count every possible "double bubble trouble" vote. He will follow suggestions made by the Courage Campaign and Secretary of State Debra Bowen. This is a huge victory that would not have been possible without you. The 32,776 Courage Campaign members who signed the petition to the registrar were crucial to our ability to keep up the pressure until he agreed to Count. Every. Vote.
Rick Jacobs just got done testifying at the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and issued this statement to the press.
The statement was issued in response to this letter from Dean Logan (pdf) to Secretary Bowen.
Thank you to all who donated and signed the petition and helped us make sure the registrar did his job and counted all of the votes. This victory would not have been possible without you.
And yes, we will make sure that Dean Logan follows through and changes the ballot design to make sure this never happens again.
Rick Jacobs just got done testifying at the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors and issued this statement to the press.
The Courage Campaign applauds Acting Registrar Dean Logan's solution to the 'double bubble' issue in Los Angeles County.
Clearly, the winners in today's announcement are, first and foremost, the voters of Los Angeles County who can maintain their confidence in the electoral process and in knowing that their vote will be counted.
Also, through the concerted efforts of the Courage Campaign, concerned citizens and organizations, strong Board leadership, and a Registrar willing to listen and do what it takes to ensure that every vote counts, Los Angeles County has, today, avoided the serious and demoralizing problems confronted by election jurisdictions elsewhere throughout the country.
Mr. Logan has arrived at the solution the Courage Campaign has advocated since the day after the election. The Courage Campaign has consistently demanded that all votes be tallied so that we know how many DTS voters tried to vote for president and then that every ballot be counted where voter intent can be ascertained. Mr. Logan is using the method suggested by the Courage Campaign and many of our friends in the election protection community. We will monitor the counting to assure that it is carried out in a timely manner.
In addition to 32,776 Courage Campaign members who signed a petition to Mr. Logan, we thank County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky for his leadership on this issue as well as the ever vigilant Secretary of State Debra Bowen.
This is a complete victory for people-powered politics and a sign that the people of this state will only accept transparency in the election process.
We look forward to working with the County, the Secretary of State and our friends in the election protection community to assure that this never happens again. Mr. Logan has promised to change the ballot design and the Courage Campaign will follow through and ensure that it is completed in time for the June primary election."
The statement was issued in response to this letter from Dean Logan (pdf) to Secretary Bowen.
Thank you to all who donated and signed the petition and helped us make sure the registrar did his job and counted all of the votes. This victory would not have been possible without you.
And yes, we will make sure that Dean Logan follows through and changes the ballot design to make sure this never happens again.
Comments are closed for this post.
"For any precinct roster where the notations exclusively indicated 'Democratic' or exclusively indicated 'American Independent', a reasonable and defensible determination can be made that any votes cast in response positions 8 through 10 correspond exclusively to that party's Presidential candidates. For precinct rosters with notations indicating both or neither party, dtermination of voter intent cannot be clearly or reasonably ascertained for votes cast in response positions 8 through 10."
(Please forgive any transcription mistakes on my part.)
If you look here...
Link
...at the "Precinct Bulletins", you can see on a precinct-by-precinct basis what the actual ballots showed. Particularly, you can see an accounting of how many ballots had marks - for 'A Independent' or 'Democratic' - for the 'NP question' in each precinct. A quick glance at a sample of precincts shows there are VERY few that have all their marks on the 'NP question' as one of the other. Most have some marks of each.
What Mr. Logan is saying is that if the Roster for a given precinct shows at least one notation of a non-partisan cross-over to AI AND one cross-over to Dem, then all mis-marked 'double bubble' ballots for that precinct will remain uncounted. If we infer from what can be seen in the Precinct Bulletins, and assume that the Rosters will in most cases reflect those ballots (a BIG assumption, I grant you), that means that VERY few precincts will be found that meet the criteria laid out by Mr. Logan in the paragraph I have transcribed.
So: "double bubble" ballots with marks in the 11 through 15 positions will be counted. If we assume a uniform distribution across the eight positions (8 through 15, and remembering that the candidates' names are rotated from position to position at different locations across the county), that means 5 of the eight positions will be counted in their entirety, or 62.5% of the currently uncounted ballots.
BUT because of what I described above, very few of the other votes in positions 8 through 10 are going to be counted.
So my guess is that (assuming no one decides to go to court to challenge what Mr. Logan proposes to do here..where they'd probably win), about two-thirds of the 49,500 ballots are going to end up being counted.
Put another way, 16,500 are still NOT going to be counted.
A big improvement, to be sure. But this is an FYI that when we hear again from the Registrar's office, don't be surprised when a large number of ballots remain uncounted.
- Robert
It is impossible for the registrar to determine voter intent in the precincts where at least one person requested an AI ballot. The votes cast in positions 8-10 in those precincts are impossible to tabulate. We always knew that was likely to be the case. There should be many precincts where nobody request an AI ballot and those top positions are able to be counted. The vast majority of the votes will be counted, but not all of them.
It further underscores how terribly designed the ballot was and why it is crucial it get fixed before the June elections.
Really? I thought your petition (and rhetoric to go with it) was that "Every vote must be counted." "The more names we add to this petition, the more likely it is that the Registrar will *count every vote*." etc., etc.
Link
I guess I (and the 30,000 people who did sign the petition) was supposed to know that "Count Evry Vote" really meant "count the 2/3rds where a reasonable inference might be made".
Geez, and I thought you were "rabble-rous[ing] with ... false sanctimony"
Link
BUt it was all just silly semantic confusion! My mistake!
Yes, I'm sure you always knew. You just didn't let on... or inform you readers.
"It is impossible for the registrar to determine voter intent in the precincts where at least one person requested an AI ballot."
That is not correct, Julia. Please see BRAD BLOG's coverage of this matter tonight right here:
Link
And thanks for all of your (and Courage Campaign's) tremendous work on this issue.
Brad
What a huge victory!
jon
PS: Robert: please stop being churlish.