Action Items and Latest on the LA "Double Bubble Trouble"
| By Julia Rosen, Online Political Director - Feb 6, 2008 1:18:14 PM PT |
| Also listed in: Election Protection California |
(cross-posted on Calitcs)
Here is the latest on the "double bubble trouble". Today the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors held a hearing. Several people testified including Rick Jacobs and the Registrar of Voters Dean Logan. The good news is that Logan sounded amenable towards counting the votes, but made no specific promises.
Any Decline-to-State voter who failed to mark the extra bubble indicating that they wanted to vote in the Democratic primary has not been counted thus far. There are no guarantees it will happen and so we are continuing to press the issue until every vote possible is counted.
The Courage Campaign is doing three things right now.
As to #3 on this list. If you are a DTS voter in Los Angeles County who asked for a Democratic Party ballot on Election Day and still have your paper receipt for voting ("voting stub") please let us know so our lawyers can insist that your ballot be counted.
OR
If you are a DTS voter in Los Angeles County and you had trouble at the polls and/or believe your vote may not have been counted.
Please use this form to report your story and receipt number if you have it on the Courage Campaign website.
Courage Campaign lawyer Steven Kaufman (of Kaufman Downing LLP) sent a new letter (pdf here) today to the L.A. ROV. Excerpts on the flip:
That is why the Courage Campaign is asking for a full recount.
After the votes are (hopefully) counted we will need to work hard to make sure this never happens again. This can be fixed.
Here is the latest on the "double bubble trouble". Today the Los Angeles Board of Supervisors held a hearing. Several people testified including Rick Jacobs and the Registrar of Voters Dean Logan. The good news is that Logan sounded amenable towards counting the votes, but made no specific promises.
Any Decline-to-State voter who failed to mark the extra bubble indicating that they wanted to vote in the Democratic primary has not been counted thus far. There are no guarantees it will happen and so we are continuing to press the issue until every vote possible is counted.
The Courage Campaign is doing three things right now.
- Requesting that the L.A. ROV conduct a count of all DTS votes, precinct by precinct.
- Requesting that the L.A. ROV immediately take steps to fix the DTS ballot design flaw for future primary elections
- Asking DTS voters across Los Angeles County to hold on to the receipt of their vote ("voting stub") until further notice.
As to #3 on this list. If you are a DTS voter in Los Angeles County who asked for a Democratic Party ballot on Election Day and still have your paper receipt for voting ("voting stub") please let us know so our lawyers can insist that your ballot be counted.
OR
If you are a DTS voter in Los Angeles County and you had trouble at the polls and/or believe your vote may not have been counted.
Please use this form to report your story and receipt number if you have it on the Courage Campaign website.
Courage Campaign lawyer Steven Kaufman (of Kaufman Downing LLP) sent a new letter (pdf here) today to the L.A. ROV. Excerpts on the flip:
It is clear that under the state election code that DTS voters who have inadvertently failed to fill in bubble numbers five and six after having received a Democratic or American Independent ballot, took all the required steps necessary to have their ballot counted, and that any additional issues inherent in the Inka-Vote system or ballot design process are contrary to law.
It is not sufficient to merely estimate the scope of the problem through random sampls and investigation. As you have stated in various media statements with regard to this issue, every effort to ascertain voter intent must be made by the Registrar's office. Taking the steps outlined below will help restore voter confidence and send a message to voters that their votes will count and that their vote does make a difference. All this can be accomplished within the 28-day statutory period for certification of the vote...
That is why the Courage Campaign is asking for a full recount.
After the votes are (hopefully) counted we will need to work hard to make sure this never happens again. This can be fixed.
Comments are closed for this post.
Follow the link for all the math, but my estimate is that counting all possible "Double Bubble" ballots could lead to a statewide shift to Obama of between 0.5% and 1.5%. In LA County the shift would be between 1.8% and 5%.
Believe me if we had been told that their vote would not count if that bubble were not filled we would have emphasized that.
I feel betrayed by the county. After spending all this time preparing for the elections we had 1/6 of the voters voting provisional ballots because they could not be found in the rosters and now this.
Who can I talk to about what I witnessed on Feb 5th? I am really concerned. I have volunteered 3 consecutive times as a pollworker and this is the worst election by far.
Please respond to this posting.
Another pollworker friend and I would like to put together something of a support/activism group comprised of concerned pollworkers -- there must be scads of folks like us who want to help change this tragically flawed system in L.A. County, mustn't there??
Why not focus on how to handle errors. Why doesn't the county send out professional trainers that will really inform pollworkers about possible problems and how to handle them. Why not tell people the truth about provisional ballots?
Why not instead of the dirt politicians talk about on TV we use the air time to inform people about registration deadlines, things to check for, numbers they can call to confirm their registration status, etc? Why can't we check this online if I can check it over the phone?
Isn't this what defines our DEMOCRACY?
For a non-partisan's vote to count in the 'partisan' races (senate, congress, president), the non-partisan has needed to mark the 'extra' bubble to indicate the party whose primary they are joining.
I am not sure why this is getting so much attention this time around; it has been this way since 2002 (except back then, it was punching out a chad instead of making a pen mark). So if people are only just now realizing this, I have bad news for you - your primary votes have not been getting counted since 2002.
As for this year: The procedure was detailed in the non-partisan's voter pamphlet. It was detailed in the poll-worker's training materials. It was most definitely emphasised at the training class I attended. At the precinct I was working at on Tuesday, we took great pains to ensure that each and every non-partisan understood what he/she needed to do, and then checked their marked ballots to ensure that they had voted exactly how they had intended. There were no mis-marked ballots at my pricinct.
If I remember correctly, there were three American Independent presidential candidates, whose ballot card numbers were #8, #9, and #10. There were eight Democratic candidates, whose ballot numbers were positions #8 through #15.
So if a voter intended to vote for Obama (position #9) but failed to mark the 'Democratic' bubble (position #6), THERE IS NO WAY to differentiate that ballot from someone who intended to vote for the American Independent presidential candidate whose name also was at position #9, but who failed to mark position #5 (to select 'American Independent').
I understand that 99.99% of the mis-marked ballots were intended to be part of the Democratic Party's primary. But if the American Independent Party wants to fight that assumption, I don't see how the Secretary of State, or any judge, over-rules them.
If you think your ballot and your polling place were badly handled, that the poll workers were badly trained and badly informed (and if the things people are saying are true, that seems to be the case), I have a solution for you!
Volunteer to work at the polls yourself!
I started working at the polls in 2002, as a reaction to the debacle in Florida in 2000. I can guarantee that these problems with not informing non-partisans about the 'extra' bubble to fill in DID NOT HAPPEN at my precinct. I personally saw to it that a dozen or more mis-marked ballots were corrected before they went into the ballot box.
If you want to ensure that these kinds of mistakes don't happen at your polling place, work there and make sure they don't.
If you want something done right, do it yourself.
In Los Angeles county, a non-partisan, or Decline-To-State, voter would not have been (or should not have been) using a Democrat ballot. They would have been using a non-partisan ballot.
You are right that filling in "another bubble" on the Democrat ballot is unnecessary. But on the non-partisn ballot, that "another bubble" is the only way for the ballot counting equipment to tell the difference between a non-partisan joining the democratic primary vs, a non-partisan joining the American Independent primary vs, a non-partisan declining to vote for president at all.
I can't say what might have been the case elsewhere. But this is how it was set up in Los Angeles County (and has been for the last four primaries).
No other county in the State does this. Statewide instructions on TV and Radio told voters just to ask for a Democratic Ballot if they were DTS. There was no special "except in L.A." caveat.
Clearly, most poll workers were not informed properly, or for their own reasons intentionally misled voters.
Dean Logan was ridden out of King County Washington on a rail for bungling the same job up there.
Essentially calling people stupid for falling for an intentional trick isn't what I consider a big D Democrat approach to protecting voters rights.
Marcia Ventura (562) 462-2726
Eileen Shea (562) 462-2648
These are the contact numbers. The only statement on the Registrars website says that they might maybe count the votes if they feel like it will influence the outcome of the Democratic Primary.
Beyond the DTS voter problems;
My polling location did not have an English copy of the "Offical Voter Imformation Guide" when I asked for someone to verify that I was correctly reading the 'PRO' argument for Prop 91 that stated "...VOTE NO", while the 'CON' argument stated "No argument against...".
Also the "offical" at my polling place told me that that Prop 91 had been "...removed from the Ballot." (He was wrong).
When I called the ROV the day before the election and THEORETICALLY inquired about changing my registration to DTS, I was told that had I registered as a DTS voter I would have been allowed to vote DEM/AI/PAF/LIB/GREEN or any other party that was not having a 'closed' primary. It wasn't until I spoke to someone while I was at the ROV office that I found out the DEM's an AI were the only 'open' primaries.
If I can't get correct answers from the ROV's office, what chance to the rank-and-file volunteers at the polls have of getting correct information to pass along to me.
My confidence in the democratic process has just about run out. This November could be the last time I even bother to vote.
Was there only ONE Democratic ballot? Meaning would a DTS voter who RECEIVED a Democratic Ballot (even if improperly received) get the SAME Democratic ballot as a registered Democrat would get? I know that seems like a dumb question, but it seems like based on what all people are saying or not saying that there was a "special" democratic ballot for DTS voters or something.
There are a lot of DTS registered voters who mistakenly received a DEM ballot, voted in a DEMOCRATIC booth and did NOT check the extra #6 bubble, who's votes COUNTED. Right? This is important because I think a lot of people did this and think their vote didn't count. But the ballot # I received is in no way attached to my party affiliation, right? So how would my vote NOT have counted like some are saying if the machine didn't know how I'm registered and all Democratic ballots were the same regardless of your party registration. NOW do I sound dumb?
A lot of the info out here on the LA County issue seems to state otherwise, that if you are a registered DTS voter, and you voted using the Democratic ballot, your vote didn't count if the box wasn't selected. That seems to be this major misinformation. That would mean that registered Democrats who didn't check that box also did not have their votes count. And that's not the case.
CAN SOMEONE SPELL THIS OUT CLEARLY? Meaning all the possiblities?
For example, Were the below instances counted or not counted:
DTS voter gets a DTS ballot and votes in Democratic booth - but doesn't select the Dem #6 bubble.
DTS voter gets a DTS ballot and votes in Democratic booth - and DOES select the Dem #6 bubble.
DTS voter gets a Democratic ballot and votes in Democratic booth but DOESN'T select the Dem #6 bubble.
DTS voter gets a Democratic ballot and votes in Democratic booth and DOES select the Dem #6 bubble.
Democratic voter gets a Democratic ballot and votes in a Democratic booth and DOESN'T selct the Dem #6 bubble.
Democratic voter gets a Democratic ballot and votes n a Democratic booth and DOES selct the Dem #6 bubble.
-------
Wish the poll workers on this blog were working in my district on the 5th! I am also considering being a poll worker, and it will be most necessary for the June Primary, in Nov. we'll ALL have the same ballots so there wont be as much confusion or room for error and disenfranchisement.
Yes.
"There are a lot of DTS registered voters who mistakenly received a DEM ballot, voted in a DEMOCRATIC booth and did NOT check the extra #6 bubble, who's votes COUNTED. Right?"
Yes. The machine that scanned the ballots and counted the votes would not be able to tell that the Democratic ballot it was scanning was given to a DTS voter erroneously. That vote would count, bubble #6 or no bubble #6.
"For example, Were the below instances counted or not counted:
DTS voter gets a DTS ballot and votes in Democratic booth - but doesn't select the Dem #6 bubble."
Did NOT get counted (for president - proposition votes would still be OK.)
"DTS voter gets a DTS ballot and votes in Democratic booth - and DOES select the Dem #6 bubble."
Counted (assuming they also marked bubble #9 or #10, etc.)
"DTS voter gets a Democratic ballot and votes in Democratic booth but DOESN'T select the Dem #6 bubble."
Counted
"DTS voter gets a Democratic ballot and votes in Democratic booth and DOES select the Dem #6 bubble."
Counted
"Democratic voter gets a Democratic ballot and votes in a Democratic booth and DOESN'T selct the Dem #6 bubble."
Counted
"Democratic voter gets a Democratic ballot and votes n a Democratic booth and DOES selct the Dem #6 bubble."
Counted
(And thank you for calling us lovely. It would be lovely if you, and other readers here, could join us next time :-)
It was the sample ballot booklet and its equivalent voting device in the voting booth that showed the bubble(s) that a non-partisan would use to select the party they were 'crossing over' into.
The device in the Democratic booth showed the "#6 means Democrat" bubble; that is the one you have seen. The device in the AI voting booth showed a similar "#5 means AI" bubble. When the non-partisan voter told the poll worker(s) that he wanted to vote in one or the other, the poll worker would then direct the non-partisan voter to the correct booth and correct voting device (and, one would have hoped, with directions on the importance of marking bubble #5 or #6).
If you go to the web site below and put in a valid LA county address, you'll be able to look at sample ballot booklets, including the Dem booklet that you have seen, and the AI booklet (an the non-partisan booklet that tried to explain what to do to the non-partisan voters.)
Link