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



"Congratulations to Rick Jacobs and the folks at the Courage Campaign for all of their hard work on this issue -- their grassroots organizing efforts have been incredibly successful and effective." -- Kim Alexander, California Voter Foundation

We won!

After weeks of bad news, here's the good news: Tens of thousands of "Decline-to-State" (DTS) voters -- who intended to cast a ballot for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton on Super Tuesday -- will now have their "double bubble" votes counted by the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters.

And it's because of you.

Thank you to the eye-popping 32,802 concerned Californians who signed our "Count Every Vote" petition to Dean Logan, the Acting Registrar of Los Angeles County.

Thank you to the amazing 437 generous donors who raised a whopping $16,572 to help our legal team keep up the pressure on Logan.

Thank you to the grassroots and the netroots -- the activists and bloggers who raised their voices loud enough so that the Los Angeles Times (see article below) and other major media outlets could no longer ignore the problem.

Thank you to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and in particular Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, for working with our lawyers to bring an end to this double bubble trouble.

And thank you to Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who suggested the methods used by Logan to make sure that every vote that can be counted... will be counted.

Because of you, Dean Logan is going to do what the Courage Campaign has advocated since the day after the primary election: where and when voter intent can be accurately determined, Logan will count the ballots of DTS voters who tried to vote for president in the Democratic and American Independent Party primaries.

This means that thousands of voters who intended to cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will not be disenfranchised. Every ballot -- in which voter intent can be clearly and concretely ascertained -- will be counted.

Will this change the delegate count for each candidate? Not according to our estimates. But counting delegates has always been a secondary goal to counting every possible vote and to sending the message to citizens that their votes will count.

Fortunately, there's even more good news: Dean Logan and the Supervisors have also promised to junk the "double-bubble" ballot design so that voters in future elections will not be disenfranchised.

We look forward to working with Acting Registrar Dean Logan, the County, Secretary Bowen, and our friends in the election protection community to make sure this never happens again.

32,802 petitions signed. 437 donors. $16,572 raised. Tens of thousands of votes counted. And the end of "double-bubble" ballots.

Of course, that was just what you did after Super Tuesday. Before the primary -- and before our legal team uncovered the double-bubble ballot problem -- you helped the Courage Campaign contact 1.1 million DTS voters with one simple message on the radio, via video, and by email and phone: "Yes, You Can... Vote for President!"

From "Yes, You Can..." to "Count Every Vote!", thank you again for making these people-powered victories possible. This is the kind of grassroots activism that will make 2008 a new era for progressive politics in California.

Rick Jacobs
Chair

P.S. We've won a big victory for voter rights in California. Thanks to the relentless efforts of so many, including our legal team, "double bubble" ballots are now history. And tens of thousands of votes for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that would have gone uncounted... will now be counted.

But we've still got a lot of work to do. To make sure every possible vote is counted, our legal team will be monitoring the process before the election is officially certified on March 4. Please consider contributing to the Courage Campaign today so that our lawyers can finish the job:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/contribute

P.P.S. As the Los Angeles Times highlighted in a front-page article last week, our legal team uncovered the "double bubble" ballot flaw -- used in three previous election cycles -- the weekend before Super Tuesday. Thanks to the pressure you put on Registrar Dean Logan, this will never happen again.