One of the most important transportation projects in California, aside from my beloved high speed rail project of course, is the Subway to the Sea. A long-planned effort to build passenger rail to Santa Monica via the Wilshire corridor, it has become a primary goal of LA Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. Few areas in North America are as congested as LA's Westside, and a subway through this region would be a godsend, creating thousands of jobs and reducing dependence on oil while untangling the traffic mess.

But LA County also has several other passenger rail projects they're considering, and with the passage of Measure R (a *tax* approved by 2/3rds of voters in the state's most populous county last November) along with a transit-friendly White House, Metro can actually reasonably expect them to get built.

The question is what gets built and when - and with what federal funds. As with most other transportation projects around the country, Metro's projects will need federal "new starts" funding. Villaraigosa wants Metro's board to prioritize the Subway to the Sea and another related project, the "Downtown Connector" (finally linking the Blue and Gold lines, as originally intended).

Villaraigosa's plans are getting some pushback from local members of Congress. 14 members of Congress, including Adam Schiff, Jane Harman, David Dreier, and Maxine Waters, wrote a letter telling the Metro board that if they follow Villaraigosa's plan, they risk losing out on federal funding:

The 14 members of Congress who signed a letter released Tuesday said those two programs [Subway to the Sea and Downtown Connector] don't have a good shot at immediate federal funding.

Further, they said the county risks not getting much from the federal New Starts program for several years unless it adds other regional transit proposals to the application, including the Gold Line extension east from Pasadena, a rail line down Crenshaw Boulevard and the Gold Line Eastside extension Phase 2 from East L.A. to South El Monte or Whittier.

"We are very concerned that Los Angeles County is not positioning itself well to receive its fair share of New Starts funding in the near- and long-term," the delegation wrote.

The background is that there are three other projects that some Metro board members and legislators want funded: a light rail line down Crenshaw, connecting the Red and Purple lines to the Expo and Green lines; and two extensions of the Gold Line into the suburban San Gabriel Valley.

The battle reflects typical political debates in LA County, with the Subway to the Sea and the Downtown Connector seen as benefiting the wealthy Westside at the expense of the less prosperous and more diverse South LA and San Gabriel Valley communities. And as the legislators' letter makes clear, it's inconceivable that Metro could get new starts funding for all 5 projects.

Yonah Freemark, who runs The Transport Politic, one of the best transportation blogs out there, points out that the other 3 projects would serve far fewer riders than the Subway to the Sea and the Downtown Connector, and that from a transportation need perspective, those should be prioritized.

Of course, the US Congress isn't a place where such sensible considerations rule the day. David Dreier, whose district includes the I-210 corridor along which one of the Gold Line extensions would run, has been particularly adamant about ensuring that project gets support from the Metro board. And South LA representatives understandably want to ensure that their communities get served by transit - as residents there have the greatest dependence on transit, their case is strong.

If it were up to me, I'd back the Subway to the Sea, the Downtown Connector, and the Crenshaw line and tell Dreier to shove it. As the LA Subway Blog notes, the Subway to the Sea will have enormous regional benefits. Just because it is located on the Westside doesn't mean that's the only place it will assist - just as the Port of Los Angeles-Long Beach doesn't just benefit people living in San Pedro and Wilmington.

But the real issue here isn't picking which of the 5 worthy projects gets supported and which doesn't. Metro would be in better shape if the state of California wasn't in the process of abandoning its support for mass transit. The state ought to be able to help fund construction of one or two of these projects, leaving the feds more able to support the other three. For example, the state should be able to help start the Crenshaw line and one of the Gold Line extensions, enabling the feds to fund the Subway to the Sea, the Downtown Connector, and the other Gold Line extension.

Southern California was the poster child for the 20th century sprawlconomy, and is now suffering greatly for having clung to that model for too long. Voters there now recognize it is time to change, and have put their money behind the kind of mass transit solutions the region desperately needs. It's up to the state and federal governments to deliver their share.

UPDATE by Robert: The Metro board voted today to recommend the Subway to the Sea and the Downtown Connector for federal new starts funding. The board also passed an amendment by Mark Ridley-Thomas directing Metro to seek all other possible funding (aside from new starts) to build the Crenshaw and Gold Line extension LRT projects.

Raise your hands if you knew there's an election in Los Angeles on Tuesday. Gold stars to you who did know. And to you who didn't, I don't blame you. The media has done a terrible job keeping people informed about their democracy and the political issues facing them. Local elections typically have an abysmal turnout rate precisely because so few people know what's going to be on the ballot.

It's time we changed that. Californians set record turnout numbers in November 2008. We need to sustain that energy. We have to ensure that 2008 was a beginning in getting people involved in the democratic process, and that means showing our friends and family that they can and should cast an informed vote next Tuesday.

That's why the Courage Campaign has launched our March 2009 LA Progressive Voter Guide. Read it, download it and bring it to the polls on Tuesday, or have it by your side as you fill our your mail-in ballot.

Most importantly, be sure to invite your friends and family to see it as well. Spread the word and let's make sure we help inform voters about their democratic choices on next week's ballot!

Below is the email we sent to our members earlier this week.   Read More »

Yesterday's legislative hearing on election problems in Los Angeles stretched all afternoon, with several hours of testimony from Dean Logan, Conny McCormack and others before voters got the opportunity to make their case. The Daily Breeze notes that Dean Logan was greeted by boos from the crowd of concerned voters and election integrity activists, but as BradBlog explains (drawing in part from the same article), Conny McCormack tried blaming Secretary of State Debra Bowen for the double bubble problem and

...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...

   Read More »

This double bubble thing sure has some legs. The discussion continues tomorrow in downtown LA with all the major electoral players in the house. Secretary of State Bowen will be there. Registrar Dean Logan and recently departed Registrar Conny McCormack. The Courage Campaign's lawyer. And a gaggle of LA electeds for good measure (and to give the forum a purpose).

The Courage Campaign proper will be represented, but this has always been about the voters. So we hope that any Courage supporters who are in the area can come by the hearing and help us fix the double bubble and all the other problems that were brought to light on election day last month.

Rick Jacobs extends a proper invitation on the flip.   Read More »

In the wake of the double bubble victory in Los Angeles that'll get more than 80% of the ballots counted, everyone's excitedly piling on. The LA Times has an opinion piece blogged called Double Bubble Smackdown! that revels in Dean Logan's final count. It focuses more on the chilly relations between Debra Bowen and LA County that preexisted over voter machine decertification.

The new tensions will be coming to a head tomorrow (Friday) at 1pm during the special hearing. As noted, "The hearing will be conducted by Senators Jenny Oropeza and Ron Calderon, and Assemblyman Curren Price. All are Democrats representing parts of Los Angeles County."

Debra Bowen will be there. Dean Logan will be there. Immediate former Registrar Conny McCormack will be there. Courage Campaign will be represented by our lawyer Steven Reyes. A rousing good time will be had by all. Within the context of an election integrity forum anyhow.

Cross posted at Calitics and at DailyKos

The final results are in for Los Angeles County, with nearly 80% of the double bubble ballots ultimately being counted towards the final total. As the Whittier Daily News reports:

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.

Of course, as the article goes on to say, Logan began the process not expecting any of the ballots to be counted:

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.

   Read More »

Our friend Brad Friedman has advanced a potential method to count more of the "double bubble trouble" ballots. This is a fairly complicated issue, but let me give you the overview. The ballot design was so terrible that there was an overlap between the American Independent Party candidates and the Democratic candidates on the ballot. In precincts where there were there no voters who requested an AI ballot, all of the votes can be counted. In the others, those votes cast for candidates in the 8-10 bubble slots will not be counted because there is no way to tell if a person intended to vote for an AI candidate or a Democrat.   Read More »

As Julia announced yesterday, we won. Dean Logan has conceded and will count as many of the votes as possible in Los Angeles County.

Rick Jacobs expands on the great news on the flip   Read More »

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.   Read More »

Bradblog once again has a great update on double-bubble madness, chronicling the blame game that recently-departed LA Registrar Conny McCormack has started playing. Discussing the recent front page LA Times article Brad explains:

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...

It was, of course, McCormack who oversaw the original design and implementation of the now-infamous double bubble ballot. So the fundamental function of her job was to know that this ballot violated election law and would likely disenfranchise thousands of voters. Her job specifically exists to know such things and avoid problems as a result. So at best, her comments belie surprising incompetence. At worst, less-surprising indifference.

More on the flip   Read More »

It's been exactly two weeks since the Super Tuesday primaries across the country and here in California. In those two weeks, the Courage Campaign has used your support to insist that the Los Angeles County Registrar count all the double bubble ballots properly. And on Friday morning, Rick Jacobs delivered your voices in petition form to Registrar Dean Logan. But the fight continues.

Get the dish from Rick Jacobs on the flip.   Read More »

BradBlog, as is the norm over there, provides an excellent evaluation of where things currently stand with the DTS 'double bubble' ballots. It's long, in-depth, and awesome. In part:

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.

He closes with an elegant summation:

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

Any questions?

But w-w-w-wait it gets worse...   Read More »

Rick Jacobs testified again on Tuesday before the LA Board of Supervisors and, well, there are developments. I won't step on Rick's toes, so hit the flip and let him tell you all about it.   Read More »

Acting Registrar of Los Angeles County Dean Logan has issued his 21 page report on preliminary findings regarding the double bubble trouble.

His full report in pdf form can be found here.

A brief summary from the report goes like this:

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.

In response to the report, Rick Jacobs has issued a statement, which can be seen on the flip in its entirety.   Read More »

The story is painfully unsurprising. More than 94,000 primary votes in Los Angeles County are in danger of not being counted because of a design flaw in the ballot.

The Courage Campaign is doing some of the legwork to insist that the votes be counted, but we're powered by you. Your signatures on our petition and your tales from the polls. I keep saying it, but the overwhelming response is both humbling and outrageous (as in, how can so many people have to do this in a functioning democracy?), but as Rick Jacobs discusses on the flip, adding your voice today can only make us stronger as we push forward.

From Rick:   Read More »

The political news this weekend has largely been focused on caucuses in Washington, Nebraska, Louisiana and Maine. But in California, we're still fighting to make sure that all the DTS ballots in Los Angeles are properly counted. It's been less than a week, but media all across the world has picked up on the story and the Sacramento Bee weighed in strongly in favor of getting the ballots properly counted in editorial on Friday.

Meanwhile, the reponse that Courage has received has been tremendous; rivalling our biggest campaigns of the past. Thousands of people have signed our petition in just a few days and hundreds of people have reported their voting experiences through our page especially to collect these testimonials.

That petition will be finding its way to Sacramento legislators soon, and we're encouraged to hear the news that Senator Dean Florez is working on legislation that would address many of the problems that we've been hearing about in the past week.

As the process winds itself towards more action, we still need your support. If you haven't already, sign the petition and/or share your election day experience. If you've already done both, then tell your friends.

The Sacramento Bee's editorial board weighed in today on the Double Bubble trouble in Los Angeles County. The editorial blasts Dean Logan and laments that with an election that is inspiring so much excitement among voters, California might ultimately squander that increased participation. It also reminds readers of the relative scale of this disenfranchisement:

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.

The response thatwe have received at the Courage Campaign has been tremendous. Voters from throughout Los Angeles have shared their Super Tuesday experiences with us, and many more have already signed our petition insisting on a full count of all votes cast in the primary. This stretches beyond any particular candidate or ultimately any particular party. It's fundamentally about whether elections will be fair and votes will be counted.

Sign the petition today and if you feel you may have been caught up by a double bubble ballot on Tuesday, tell us what you experienced at the polls.

In the aftermath of Super Tuesday's election issues in Los Angeles, we've heard from tons of voters with stories about ballot problems. Voters like Julian H.:

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.

It looks like half of the DTS ballots in Los Angeles- about 94,000 votes- will not be counted. But Courage continues to work with Dean Logan in LA to ensure that, no matter who people were voting for, every DTS ballot gets counted.

On the flip, Rick Jacobs provides a full, in-depth rundown of everything that's been going on.   Read More »

(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.

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.

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:   Read More »

(cross-posted on Crooks & Liars)

The Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters decided in they could save a few bucks by creating a complicated ballot design for the presidential primary. In 2008, that decision has now lead to the disenfranchisement of countless voters. What we don't know is the scope of the problem.

Here is the deal:

Almost 20% of California voters are registered as "Decline-to-State" (DTS). About 776,000 of these DTS voters live in Los Angeles County. To vote for President, like other DTS voters across the state, LA County DTS voters had to ask for a "Democratic Party ballot" on Tuesday (see funny, now prophetic video here).

However, in Los Angeles County -- and only Los Angeles County -- these DTS voters were given a special "Democratic Party" ballot that required voters not only to fill out a bubble for their favorite Democratic Party presidential candidate, but ALSO to fill in a bubble at the top that they wanted to vote "Democratic" -- a redundant requirement. According to the Los Angeles County ROV, if the DTS voter didn't fill in the redundant "Democratic" bubble, their vote would not be counted.

This is what we are calling "double bubble trouble".

The Courage Campaign, thanks to our lawyer Steven Reyes' eagle eyes, discovered that a failure to mark the "Democratic" bubble resulted in the vote not being counted. Regardless of the clear-cut intentions of voters, the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters (ROV) is refusing to do what is necessary to count these ballots.

Now, under a national spotlight, the ROV must do the right thing and count these votes correctly. Voter intent is clear. Missing the top bubble (and it's easy to miss) after you already asked specifically for a "Democratic" ballot -- and voted for a Democratic candidate -- should not mean that your vote goes uncounted.

This is not about the candidates. This is about making sure every vote is counted.

Help us fight to make sure every vote is counted and that this never happens again.