LA Weekly

This situation is asinine! The non-partisan ballot has a bubble that indicates the party of the candidate you are voting for, when the selection of the candidate makes their party designation perfectly clear. Why is there this need for a superfluous bubble in the first place??

The solution to this debacle seems so simple. Can’t the state authorize the votes to be counted even without the party bubble punched? The fact that the vote was cast on a non-partisan ballot will distinguish the ballot from those of the Democratic party, which was the point of the inane bubble in the first place.

Wow. This is just further evidence that the political parties are both defunct and disfunctional. Personally I care more about what the candidate's track record shows he or she believes in than voting on paty lines. Plus it is time for all of the representational voting to end as well. It was devised for a time period where getting a national popular vote would take a very long time. Since we can now tabulate the popular vote as the polls close we should just convert to that. End the primaries and the electoral college. They are no longer needed. Just have a registration date for voters and candidates and the candidate that gets the most votes wins. No parties, no pre vote, no electoral college vote and lastly no being forced to a second best candidate in either party. Just anyone who meets the constitutional requirement for president can run their best campaign and the most votes wins.

i was very confused by this. i was marked as nonpartisan, but i wanted to vote for a democrat, so i was informed that i would have to change from n/p to democrat in the rolls. so i did so, then was given a democrat ballot. at the top of the democrat ballot was that hole to punch if i was nonpartisan. i wasn't sure if i was or not, since i had just "switched" a minute ago. i went ahead and punched that hole, then punched another hole for my democrat candidate of choice. did my vote count?

i prefer being nonpartisan, and don't want to be pigeonholed as a democrat, nor do i want to be put in democrat mailing lists, so i plan to call the city and change back to nonpartisan on monday, after all the hullabaloo dies down.

No actually Sam by the sounds of it the 'extra bubble' is serving it's purpose magnificently...it's causing confusion. What...would you expect something simple and straightforward? hahha

Leave it up to Florida or California to screw things up. People! open your eyes and read what the form states, maybe a simple test can be given to make sure you can read and follow directions.

Go Clinton.. (Obama is for the uneducated)

This article describes my situation - I am registered Nonpartisan and opted to vote in the Democratic primary. I was told exactly what to do and was paying very close attention so I did not have any problem. However, the process did seem absurdly confusing and I could see how a non native English speaker, an older person, or a first time voter could skip this process and void their vote.

Could someone post a scan or replicate what the design of this thing looks like?

And why do you need 3 different types of ballots?
Why not just 1 ballot, all the candidates on the one ballot with their party affiliation next to their name AND a person next to the booth who the voter can ask as many questions as needed about how to mark the ballot properly.

Senior Voter: Hey sonny, WHAT if I wanna vote for Obama? I put a tick in this box here?
Helper: No ma'am. You put an X in that box there.
Senior Voter: Oh, OK. So if I wanna vote for Juliani I put an X in this box then?
Helper: Close. See this box is on the same line as Juliani but it's actually at the beginning of Hillary's name.
You need to look over at the beginning of Juliani's name. See. There's a box at the beginning of his name. Mark the box at the beginning of the candidate's name.
Senior Voter: Oh! ok. Thanks a lot sonny boy

The Senior Voter then enters the voting booth and accurately and intentionally votes for Ron Paul. No Mistakes.

I'm a first time voter and a dts voter and I was instructed not to fill out the bubble, I asked the poll worker to instruct me as to how to fill the ballot out. My vote will not count. It's sad that only the Obama campaign is responding to this because many dts voters voted for hillary.

I encountered this at my polling place. There was much confusion as to what to do.

I was an N/P and requested a democratic ballot. They had me cross off N/P next to my signature and write DEM. Then they handed me a non-partisan ballot and I was given no further instruction, just pointed to to the voting booths. There were 3 booths with a small sign reading "DEM," 3 with "REP" and 1 that listed all other parties and non-partisan. Luckily I surmised that I needed to be at the DEM booth and not the Independent booth. I also noticed the extra punch needed to be made, which I did, though there was a lot of confusion with older people trying to vote, going to the wrong booths, etc. and no one helping anyone understand unless their ballots had too many punches on them.

Could have definitely been handled with a little more finesse. I was actually very concerned with the system at the time, because I feel like as simple as it should be, they made it very difficult and ambiguous for people who didn't know what they were doing.

It proves that democracy in America is a "civilized" version of democracy in places like the Congo and Kenya. I would bet that the guy or guys who thought of this "bubble" are either supporters of the Clintons in the past or are current supporters of Clinton now. They found a legalese way of machete-ing off our voting arms. It's sneaky and ingenious. They knew that statistically a great percentage of people would overlook the extra, virtually hidden bubble. It all makes perfect sense, coming from legalese types that like to parse things like the word IS.

Oh dear... the SAME Dean Logan of Kean County Florida 2004

The commenter "Altoid" above is a perfect example of an Independent voter whose vote WAS NOT COUNTED. The voter was an Independent who was given a Democratic ballot, and by indicating on the ballot that he/she was an Independent, their vote will be considered provisional.

Californians, you MUST ensure that these votes are counted. You and only you have the power to set this situation right. Call your representatives and election officials. If you don't speak up, these votes will never be counted.

I think they should start the whole process over! this is not the only part of the Country that has had problems, they need to reform the voting system now before it's too late!

To me all of this is reason enough to support Obama. The Clinton campaign has shown they are just as dirty as the Republicans. I don't think that's OK. We have no moral ground if we don't stand up to this kind of stuff. Democracy is more important than anything else.

You should have known when LA hired Dean Logan from Seattle who oversaw the illegal ballot stuffing fraudulent election in King County, Washington State in our 2004 election.

I am not sure if my ballot will be counted or not, I am NP but was given a Democratic ballot and pointed towards a booth with no sign (none of them did). I hope my vote is counted.

I would love to have all the ballots in all the states be the same, I easy to use system with clear instructions that anyone could find online before they vote.

Of course if that happened someone's cousin would get the contract and we would have no child left behind all over again where Mcgraw Hill got the contract to supply every state and therefore controlled the prices).
cheers,

What about registered Democrats who bubbled it by accident?

This happened to my boyfriend last night. We stood outside the voting office in shock after it dawned on him that he'd missed something that would probably make his vote be disqualified.

He is not a, "non native English speaker, an older person, or a first time voter." In fact, he's a scientist with an advanced degree in physics. Maybe it was all that heavy thinking he did at work before rushing home in traffic to vote - he arrived at his poll place with ten minutes to spare, (and why are our elections held on a weekday? Anybody?), but regardless, I believe it was the design of that damn ballot that threw him off.

And guess who he voted for...

Oh wow, this is absurd. Isn't there anything we can do to get those votes counted? Lack of directions, lack of patience and lack of honesty are all what happened in CA.

You people really know how to overreact! Asinine? Defunct? Confusing?

I voted in LA County yesterday. When I got to the booth and saw the extra bubble, I was confused at first. Then I READ THE DIRECTIONS, and voted.

Relax people. Not everything is a conspiracy.

This is the most rediculous thing I've ever heard of! I can't believe they've added one more thing to screw up the ballots. I know for a fact at my voting place they did not tell anyone about the "extra bubble". There were several non-partisan voters in line in front of me that I heard ask for a democratic voting ballot, and not once did anyone of the poll workers say anything about the extra bubble. It's just another ploy to screw up the Presidential Election. What are they afraid of? That Obama might WIN? Somebody better start putting together a committee to sue them if those ballots aren't counted. It's pretty obvious these people wanted to vote Democratically, or they wouldn't have asked for a different ballot in the first place - and they wouldn't have been able to vote for Obama. If the box is checked (or inked) the vote had better count!!

"Leave it up to Florida or California to screw things up. People! open your eyes and read what the form states, maybe a simple test can be given to make sure you can read and follow directions. Go Clinton.. (Obama is for the uneducated)" -Jeff

Actually the less educated (not necessarily less intelligent though) is for hillary. A higher percentage of voters that graduated from university voted for OBAMA (39% to 34%), and an even higher percentage (49% to 35%) of people with no uni degree voted for hillary (http://politics.nytimes.com/election-guide/2008/results/vote-polls/NH.html).

Hope you see this Jeff.

Extra bubble? Nobody told me I had to fill in an extra bubble.

I am a veteran pollworker and have experienced two closed primaries (not this year as I did exit polling). This problem is endemic.

The reason the extra bubble is required is because ALL nonpartisan ballots are the same, as you noted above with the Registrar’s flyer. When the voter walks in and announces a party, it is merely recorded on the roster next to the voter’s name, by law, and the ballot clerk hands them a NP ballot and is supposed to show them to a Democratic or American Independent booth. Filling the bubble allows the computer to determine which primary they voted in, because the ballot positions for the AI and Democratic candidates are the same (8-10 for AI and 8-15 on the Democratic ballot). Thus, voter intent is going to be tricky for non-bubble fillers, since who’s to say that, if they voted for a candidate in ballot positions 8-10, that they didn’t want to vote in the American Independent primary? (If they voted for someone in positions 11-15, then intent would be clear. Remember that candidates rotate between each assembly district, but the 8-10 and 8-15 stay the same.)

Yes, the American Independent Party is a really bad name. Here’s how you check how confusing it is: look at the number of people that voluntarily choose to participate in the AI primary (by filling in the AI bubble), and look at the number of votes cast in the AI primary. Sometimes, there are more independents choosing to be AI than there are actual votes cast in the AI primary (in other words, people chose AI and didn’t actually vote in the primary that they chose). It would be interesting to note the number of undervotes for the AI primary.

There were 85,000 Dem crossover voters in this primary, but in the 2000 blanket primary (where all individuals could vote for a list of all candidates on the nonpartisan ballot), there were 81,500 Democratic votes, and about 61,000 Republican votes. But the electorate has grown significantly since 2000, and the interest in this election is much higher among independents than the 2000 primary, which was essentially decided at this point. From there, you can estimate the actual number of NPs who wanted to cast a vote but were lost. Factoring in turnout, growth, and the fact that the Republican party was closed to NP/DTS, I would say about 40-60,000 votes could have potentially been lost. Not hundreds of thousands, but not zero.

The solution that still complies with state law is to simply hand nonpartisan voters that request a party ballot that party’s ballot (instead of the special NP ballot); or, continue the existing process but change the ballot positions (so that Dem candidates are in the first column, Rep candidates are the second column, etc…. did you notice how many blank pages there were in this year’s ballot?) so that there is no doubt of voter intent. It is not difficult to have the Republicans turn one or two pages before they start voting and you can have the computer scan for votes across multiple columns and reject those as being incorrect “blanket primary” votes.
Of course, we had a system for a blanket primary, supported by 60% of the voters. Thank you California Democratic Party for litigating this matter, striking down the blanket primary, and creating the exact problem you are now dealing with now.

political parties should catch this stuff before the election. When they don't I wonder why anyone ever gives them money. elections should be their main reason to exist. If they can't do that right, surely there are some trash besides some highway that needs picking up some where. Alaska maybe...

"Triggering the Grand Irrationality?"

Cowering in an obscure corner of the food pyramid

somewhere between the tofu and the unflavored yogurt

contemplating the juxtaposition of intangibles for all you are worth.....

Jeff and Ryan above dismissed the concerns of this massive confusion. Jeff said: "People! open your eyes and read what the form states, maybe a simple test can be given to make sure you can read and follow directions."

Here's your test. Go check out the ballot design and let us all know how simple it is: It's right here:

http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5665

...along with reports from all sorts of poll workers and voters who I spoke to who *still* couldn't figure out how this mess was supposed to work!

It seems to me this is just a function of low voter IQ, something no "system" can remedy. I mean if you're illiterate--and many voters, particularly minorities--are then there's no real hope for any system to work. I mean if your Pontiac won't start then it's not going to help if you can't get to the polls, you know, not to mention if you've got indigestion from fried chicken and watermelons.