Thread: LA VOTER CONFUSION!

Calif. Nonpartisan Voters Report Trouble At Polls

CityAttorney Concerned About L.A. Voter ConfusionLOS ANGELES (CBS) ― California's top election official said Tuesday that her office had fielded complaints from nonpartisan voters who had trouble casting presidential primary ballots.

Under state rules, voters who aren't affiliated with any political party can vote in the Democratic or American Independent primaries, but they have to specially request a ballot. The state's Republican primary is closed to voters not registered with the party.

In some parts of the state, registrars reported a surge in requests from nonpartisan voters for Democratic ballots. Steve Weir, registrar for Contra Costa County in the San Francisco Bay area, said two precincts called asking for deliveries of extra ballots before 8 p.m.

Nicole Winger, a spokeswoman for the Secretary of State, said the most common complaint into a state hotline came from voters in the decline-to-state category who were upset after being mistakenly told they could not vote for a Democrat in the presidential election.

About 20 percent of the state's voters are not affiliated with any political party.

In Los Angeles County, elected officials and voter-outreach groups threatened legal action against the county registrar over concerns that a so-called "double-bubble" problem with the county's ballots could disenfranchise nonpartisan voters. The ballots given to those voters required them to fill in a bubble specifying which primary they were voting in.

The bubble appears before the list of presidential candidates.

If voters failed to mark that spot, the county's scanning machines would not record the selection for president.

Los Angeles County is home to more than 784,000 decline-to-state voters.

Democrat Barack Obama's campaign, which expected its advantage to come from independent voters, placed calls to nonpartisan supporters reminding them to fill in the bubble.

Meanwhile, one voter-outreach group that claimed the county's ballot setup violates state election law said it planned to set up a Web site to collect ballot stub numbers from nonpartisan voters in order to request special hand-counts from the county registrar's office.

"The registrar has to be willing to tell people whether their vote counted," said Courage Campaign chair Rick Jacobs. The group is not affiliated with any candidate, but had retained an election law firm that also represented Obama.

With only a few hours to go before polls closed on Tuesday, Registrars stopped tallying the more than 2.3 million absentee ballots received before Election Day.

The record number of Californians casting mail-in ballots for the presidential primary was one factor expected to lead to a later-than-normal vote tally.

Voter interest ran high, with both the Republican and Democratic presidential primaries hotly contested. That caused many of the 5.5 million voters who requested absentee ballots to wait until the last minute to make a decision.

That could lead some counties to delay final results until Wednesday or later. Mail-in ballots received on Election Day can be counted only after precinct votes are tallied and then must go through a time-consuming verification process.

With about 50 percent of ballots expected to be mail-in, registrars were warning that 20 percent or more of all ballots may go uncounted on Election Night.

The shift in California's presidential primary from June to February this year repositioned the state, the nation's richest delegate prize, as a key battleground for candidates. Voters responded to the heightened interest, with 15.7 million registering for Tuesday's election.

That's the most ever for a presidential primary in California and is 700,000 more than registered for the 2004 primary.

The majority of voters will cast paper ballots after an intensive review of electronic voting machines last year revealed that many of them could be hacked, leading the secretary of state's office to implement new restrictions.

This prompted 21 counties to revert to paper ballots, including some of the state's most populous -- Riverside, San Bernardino, San Diego and Santa Clara.

The return to paper ballots in some of those counties also played into the expected slow tally on Election Night, in part because counties did not have enough high-speed optical scan machines to read the paper ballots quickly.

Instead of simply loading memory cards into readers and getting instant results, workers at county offices throughout the state were expected to spend the night feeding ballots into scanning machines by hand.

A shortage of smaller scanning machines, which typically are distributed to individual polling places, meant many counties were to do all their counting at a central office. Ballots were to be driven -- and sometimes flown -- from far-flung locations.

Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo Tuesday issued the following statement in the wake of numerous reports of wide-spread nonpartisan voter confusion over Los Angeles County's "double bubble" voter ballot:

"I have heard numerous reports from voters throughout the City of Los Angeles which point to wide-spread voter confusion over Los Angeles County's so-called 'double-bubble' Decline-to-State non-partisan voter ballot. We understand this ballot is unique to the County of Los Angeles.

"In light of these reports, I am calling upon Secretary of State Debra Bowen and L.A. County Registrar Dean Logan to review the county's unique and potentially confusing ballot design.

"It would be unfortunate if non-partisan voters, confused by the county's unique "double bubble" ballot design, did not have their vote counted.

"I urge the Secretary of State and County Registrar to do everything within their power to ensure that every vote is counted, and to carefully weigh voter intent against this confusing Los Angeles County ballot design.

"Los Angeles' non-partisan voters must not be disenfranchised because of a confusing ballot design."

Los Angeles County voters registered as "nonpartisan/decline to state" but who want to vote for an American Independent or Democratic candidate in the presidential primary must mark the box labeled "Democrat" or "American Independent" at the top of the ballot. Voters began to report Tuesday morning that they did not realize they needed to check the box on the ballot in addition to choosing a corresponding candidate.

Crossover votes will not be counted unless the "Democrat" or "American Independent" box is selected in the party field at the top of the ballot, according to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk's Office. Voters also need to choose a corresponding candidate.

http://cbs2.com/politics/Ballot.Double. ... 46580.html

Yep, here in CA by trying to accommodate everyone they just totally screw everything up! Welcome to the land of fruits and nuts.

Poor confused illegals voting for the first time.

Dixie

Hmmm...interesting. Wonder if it will have any effect on McCain! Thanks for the post!

Originally Posted by Bowman

Yep, here in CA by trying to accommodate everyone they just totally screw everything up! Welcome to the land of fruits and nuts.

and flakes...like a bowl of granola! Just kidding!!!

Originally Posted by Dixie

Poor confused illegals voting for the first time.

Dixie

Good one, Dixie!

Originally Posted by Dixie

Poor confused illegals voting for the first time.

Dixie

You really have to wonder about that

I've voted for years now and its always been an easy, cut and dry
deal

They were confused by the bubbles!

My daughter emailed me two hours ago and said that her polling place in the Valley did not even have her name on the sign in! So they said..if you want to vote...you can't be Rep or Ind...you have to vote DEM...or you don't vote!!!!

She said...I just grabbed the provisional ballot and voted for Barack as a protest vote! She said 'at least I got to vote on the Props!

The primaries are actually more important than the General; and so many people have been disenfranchised.

Originally Posted by Dixie

Poor confused illegals voting for the first time.

Dixie