...it was McCormack who was met with the most derision, by audience and Legislative inquisitors both, as she dissembled to the panel and attempted to blame Bowen's "Top-to-Bottom Review" of voting systems for her own failure, disingenuously saying the SoS' efforts to do the job she was elected to do, was the reason that McCormack couldn't have fixed the problem before it disenfranchised thousands of legal voters again this year...

The count, completed Sunday, had no effect on the outcome of the primary.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton received 51 percent of the 47,153 votes that were counted. Barack Obama gained 42percent of those same ballots.

Just over 12,000 votes could not be interpreted, said Dean Logan, the acting registrar-recorder/county clerk.

Logan initially believed none of the "double bubble" votes could be counted in cases where non-partisan voters had failed to fill in a bubble specifying in which party's presidential race they were casting a "crossover" ballot.

In her best Condoleese, McCormack is quoted by the paper today saying, "This is an unfortunate, unanticipated result...No one could have predicted this."

Sound familiar?

She is shortly contradicted, in the same article, by a spokesperson from her own former office, before she continues on to blame voters and poll workers for the problem that she created --- as now confirmed by both the LA Times and California's Secretary of State Debra Bowen --- before then proceeding to do absolutely nothing about it...

For the moment then, some 50,000 voters in Los Angeles County have had their votes for Presidential candidate currently miscounted. An intended vote for Hillary Clinton, for example, has not been registered as a vote for her. She has lost that vote for the moment, and the voter has been disenfranchised. Needlessly.

Moreover, current acting Registrar Dean Logan is claiming that, due to the fact that the same sets of bubbles were used for both Dem and AI candidates, it's "impossible" to determine with absolute certainty the intent of the voter. But he is wrong. In almost every single case.

The current miscount/error rate for those 50,000 ballots is now at 100%. Thus, any ballot counted at this point will only lower the current miscount/error rate.

Since almost every single one of those ballots can be counted accurately, as per the voter intent, beyond a shadow of a doubt, it's an absolute absurdity and outrage that Logan is claiming that none of them can be, as he argued in an absurd report [PDF] delivered to the County's Board of Supervisor's on Monday.

The excuses must stop. Dean Logan must get to work and start counting. NOW.

Any questions?

Registrar Dean Logan said those improperly filled out ballots are impossible to count by hand because of the county's complicated voting system, which requires crossover voters to fill in two "bubbles": one to choose a political party and one to indicate their presidential choice.

"There's no way in looking at the ballot to discern voters' intent," Logan said after releasing preliminary findings about the flawed voting system.

In conducting the review and analysis, three central findings have emerged. First, although any quantification is significant, the universe of ballots impacted by the cross-over issue has been found to be much smaller than the number that has been reported in the media since Election Day. Second, the limitations of our voting system and the ballot design impede an ability to determine voter intent on those ballots that were impacted; and third, a clear need exists to immediately modify the ballot layout and voting procedures to facilitate cross-over voting in a manner that does not require additional steps on the part of the voter.

The scale of disenfranchisement is huge - 94,500 of 189,000 decline-to-state votes. That's half of the nonpartisan ballots. By comparison, in the infamous Florida "butterfly ballot" debacle in the 2000 presidential election, 19,120 Palm Beach County ballots went uncounted because of the bad ballot design.

Worse, acting Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters Dean Logan told county supervisors that the county had used the same "double bubble" design in 2004 and 2006. In those elections, only 40 percent of the county's decline-to-state voters' ballots were counted. It is outrageous that the county knew of this massive disenfranchisement and did not make changes. This calls for an investigation.

I've been following politics before I even hit my teens.
And 2 weeks before this election, I turned 18, with my registration in
weeks before. I knew the issues, the candidates, the propositions, and
for the fist time in my life cast a ballot. I heard the next day about
the double bubble. No one at the polls mentioned it, and I didn't see
instructions that even pointed to its existence. It's not such a great
feeling that you're first close up experience in a system you've
watched for so long at a distance could have amounted to
nothing.

1. Requesting that the L.A. ROV conduct a count of all DTS votes, precinct by precinct.



2. Requesting that the L.A. ROV immediately take steps to fix the DTS ballot design flaw for future primary elections



3. Asking DTS voters across Los Angeles County to hold on to the receipt of their vote ("voting stub") until further notice.