Obama vs. Clinton: I've got bad news for you
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Tags: Barack Obama, california, Dean Logan, double bubble trouble, DTS, Election 2008, Election Integrity, Hillary Clinton, Los Angeles, Rick Jacobs
Tags: Barack Obama, california, Dean Logan, double bubble trouble, DTS, Election 2008, Election Integrity, Hillary Clinton, Los Angeles, Rick Jacobs
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.:
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.
I've got some good news. And I've got some bad news for you -- bad news for the election integrity movement in California as well as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
First, the good news.
In the days leading up to Super Tuesday, your people-powered activism made it possible for the Courage Campaign to contact 1.1 million independent "Decline-to-State" voters -- yes, one-third of the 3 million total DTS voters in California -- to inform them about their right to vote in Tuesday's Democratic Party presidential primary.
Your support also made it possible for the Courage Campaign to place "Yes, You Can... Vote for President!" radio ads with Bradley Whitford on the air in Los Angeles and San Diego, expanding our original ad buy from radio stations in San Francisco, Sacramento, Fresno and Bakersfield.
The bad news?
In what the media is now calling "Double Bubble Trouble," 94,000 "Decline-to-State" votes in Los Angeles County -- 50% of the total DTS ballots cast -- are being rejected due to a ballot design flaw, despite the Courage Campaign's discovery of the "double bubble" problem and official notification to the Registrar prior to Election Day.
Unfortunately, Dean Logan, the Registrar in charge of Los Angeles County, is refusing to conduct a physical hand-count of every "Decline-to-State" vote before the official vote is certified in just a few weeks.
Every vote must be counted. And time is running out. Please sign our petition to Registrar Dean Logan today demanding that he conduct a physical hand count of all "Decline-to-State" votes cast in the Democratic primary. The more names we add to this petition, the more likely it is that the Registrar will count every vote:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/CountEveryVote
Last weekend, lawyers for the Courage Campaign uncovered the "double bubble" problem -- a shocking requirement that "Decline-to-State" voters fill in a redundant "Democratic" bubble (on a ballot clearly marked "Democratic Party") as well as a bubble next to their preferred presidential candidate. Our legal team realized that -- without the "Democratic" bubble filled in -- the county's optical scanners would void votes for "President of the United States," regardless of voter intent.
On Monday morning, 24 hours before polls opened, we sent a letter from our lawyer to the L.A. ROV, threatening legal action if the Registrar did not rectify the ballot problem before the primary. Unfortunately, on Election Day, polling places across Los Angeles erupted as the votes of DTS voters were rejected, even though almost every one of these voters clearly intended to vote for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. According to the Los Angeles Times:
The registrar's comments followed an uproar among decline-to-state voters in the county who discovered too late that they were required to mark a bubble on the ballot denoting which party primary they were voting in. Some complained that poll workers told them not to mark the bubble; others said they were unaware of the requirement, which is unique to L.A. County.
Had we not warned Dean Logan and the press on Monday, the numbers of disenfranchised voters could have been significantly higher. As a result of our threatened legal action, the Associated Press, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and several TV and radio stations jumped on the issue immediately and Logan issued a Public Service Announcement and last-minute directions to poll workers.
But now Mr. Logan is refusing to do everything in his power to count every vote cast by "Decline-to-State" voters. What does this say to DTS voters -- who represent 19.3% of the total electorate in California? Please sign this petition to Dean Logan today and tell him to conduct a physical hand-count immediately. Then tell your friends to demand that every vote be counted as soon as possible. With only 26 days left before the L.A. County vote is officially certified, there's no time to waste:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/CountEveryVote
We don't know if this "Double Bubble Trouble" will change the number of delegates that either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will receive. But we do know that we need to protect voter rights, increase voter confidence in our elections system, and prevent this from ever happening again.
We live in a democracy in which every vote is supposed to count. But, in Los Angeles on Tuesday, the votes of almost 100,000 Decline-to-State voters were rejected because they didn't fill in an extra, irrelevant bubble.
Never again. Not in California. Not in America. Please sign our petition to Registrar Dean Logan right now:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/CountEveryVote
We know Secretary Debra Bowen is paying attention. And we have friends in Los Angeles who are focused on this issue as well-- like Eric Garcetti, President of the Los Angeles City Council, and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky -- but they need your help. With hearings being set up by State Senator Dean Florez and the eyes of California voters converging on Los Angeles County, there's no time to waste.
Thank you so much for your activism, especially today.
Rick Jacobs
Chair
P.S. Please read this heartbreaking message that we just received from Julian H., a young man voting for the very first time:
"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."
If you know of any "Decline-to-State" voters in Los Angeles like Julian H., please send them to a special web page we have set up specifically for disenfranchised DTS voters:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/LosAngelesVotes
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.
I've got some good news. And I've got some bad news for you -- bad news for the election integrity movement in California as well as Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.
First, the good news.
In the days leading up to Super Tuesday, your people-powered activism made it possible for the Courage Campaign to contact 1.1 million independent "Decline-to-State" voters -- yes, one-third of the 3 million total DTS voters in California -- to inform them about their right to vote in Tuesday's Democratic Party presidential primary.
Your support also made it possible for the Courage Campaign to place "Yes, You Can... Vote for President!" radio ads with Bradley Whitford on the air in Los Angeles and San Diego, expanding our original ad buy from radio stations in San Francisco, Sacramento, Fresno and Bakersfield.
The bad news?
In what the media is now calling "Double Bubble Trouble," 94,000 "Decline-to-State" votes in Los Angeles County -- 50% of the total DTS ballots cast -- are being rejected due to a ballot design flaw, despite the Courage Campaign's discovery of the "double bubble" problem and official notification to the Registrar prior to Election Day.
Unfortunately, Dean Logan, the Registrar in charge of Los Angeles County, is refusing to conduct a physical hand-count of every "Decline-to-State" vote before the official vote is certified in just a few weeks.
Every vote must be counted. And time is running out. Please sign our petition to Registrar Dean Logan today demanding that he conduct a physical hand count of all "Decline-to-State" votes cast in the Democratic primary. The more names we add to this petition, the more likely it is that the Registrar will count every vote:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/CountEveryVote
Last weekend, lawyers for the Courage Campaign uncovered the "double bubble" problem -- a shocking requirement that "Decline-to-State" voters fill in a redundant "Democratic" bubble (on a ballot clearly marked "Democratic Party") as well as a bubble next to their preferred presidential candidate. Our legal team realized that -- without the "Democratic" bubble filled in -- the county's optical scanners would void votes for "President of the United States," regardless of voter intent.
On Monday morning, 24 hours before polls opened, we sent a letter from our lawyer to the L.A. ROV, threatening legal action if the Registrar did not rectify the ballot problem before the primary. Unfortunately, on Election Day, polling places across Los Angeles erupted as the votes of DTS voters were rejected, even though almost every one of these voters clearly intended to vote for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. According to the Los Angeles Times:
The registrar's comments followed an uproar among decline-to-state voters in the county who discovered too late that they were required to mark a bubble on the ballot denoting which party primary they were voting in. Some complained that poll workers told them not to mark the bubble; others said they were unaware of the requirement, which is unique to L.A. County.
Had we not warned Dean Logan and the press on Monday, the numbers of disenfranchised voters could have been significantly higher. As a result of our threatened legal action, the Associated Press, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and several TV and radio stations jumped on the issue immediately and Logan issued a Public Service Announcement and last-minute directions to poll workers.
But now Mr. Logan is refusing to do everything in his power to count every vote cast by "Decline-to-State" voters. What does this say to DTS voters -- who represent 19.3% of the total electorate in California? Please sign this petition to Dean Logan today and tell him to conduct a physical hand-count immediately. Then tell your friends to demand that every vote be counted as soon as possible. With only 26 days left before the L.A. County vote is officially certified, there's no time to waste:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/CountEveryVote
We don't know if this "Double Bubble Trouble" will change the number of delegates that either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will receive. But we do know that we need to protect voter rights, increase voter confidence in our elections system, and prevent this from ever happening again.
We live in a democracy in which every vote is supposed to count. But, in Los Angeles on Tuesday, the votes of almost 100,000 Decline-to-State voters were rejected because they didn't fill in an extra, irrelevant bubble.
Never again. Not in California. Not in America. Please sign our petition to Registrar Dean Logan right now:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/CountEveryVote
We know Secretary Debra Bowen is paying attention. And we have friends in Los Angeles who are focused on this issue as well-- like Eric Garcetti, President of the Los Angeles City Council, and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky -- but they need your help. With hearings being set up by State Senator Dean Florez and the eyes of California voters converging on Los Angeles County, there's no time to waste.
Thank you so much for your activism, especially today.
Rick Jacobs
Chair
P.S. Please read this heartbreaking message that we just received from Julian H., a young man voting for the very first time:
"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."
If you know of any "Decline-to-State" voters in Los Angeles like Julian H., please send them to a special web page we have set up specifically for disenfranchised DTS voters:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/LosAngelesVotes
You had to fill in the bubble if you were given a Nonpartisan ballot, so the machine would know that it was supposed to read the Democratic section of the ballot--something it did automatically on Democratic ballots.
Let's understand the situation accurately before we go filing official legal documents that misstate the details and weaken our case...
Yes, I did mark the bubble. I bet a lot of Democrats did that too by mistake. Are our ballots going to be counted?
I haven't seen any discussion on this.
You can find the instructions given to poll workers on page 26 of the poll worker's election guide.
Link
Jeez, maybe you should have made your great "discovery" six years ago. Primaries in Los Angeles County have worked this way since at least 2002. I'm not sure why it is getting so much attention this time around. (Although if this source of error is corrected, or improved, by the June Primary, that will be fine with me.)
As for the question of what happens to a Democratic ballot (as opposed to a non-partisan, or DTS ballot) if you marked the 'Democratic' bubble (position #6); relax. Your ballot is just fine. It did not, does not, matter whether or not a Democrat marks position #6. Your vote will be counted.
Position #6 (or position #5 for American INdependents) only matters for non-partisan or DTS ballots.
Not to say you are incorrect, but I don't recall seeing this on the ballot in the 2004 primary. I think something this blatantly ambiguous on a ballot would have been noticed before. It stuck out like a sore thumb to me this time. I understood it after reading it twice, but wondered (rightly so) if it would confuse many people. The poll worker I talked to afterward confirmed that many voters had trouble understanding the double-bubble.
I question why the Registrar would print separate ballots for Non-partisan and DEM voters, yet not remove the obviously confusing box entirely from the DEM ballot since the DEM voters did not need it.
The entire situation is an OBVIOUS blunder on the part of the Registrar that should be rectified by counting every vote this time and fixing the ballots in the future.
It was absolutely there in 2002. And in that election, there were four parties that allowed non-partisans to join their primaries - American Independent, Democratic, Natural Law, and Republican.
When you explain the same thing 50 or 100 times in a day, it sticks in your mind.
To relax I'd like to hear it from the election officials but I don't sweat it too much because the voter's intent is crystal clear. I chose a Democratic candidate on a Democratic ballot. Bubble or no bubble.
But then if it's so simple why not give all NP voters (who wish to participate in primaries) partisan ballots instead of NP ballots with overlapping bubble IDs?
I'm not saying there was a conspiracy. I'm just saying there was already a better system in place that wouldn't disenfranchise 90,000 voters.
I spent the whole last month trying to convince young people to participate (for no particular candidate) and I swore to them that their vote mattered. I feel like a dirty old liar now.
I tried to justify it to them like this: It's like a computer game. You always die in the end. You just try to improve your score.
Yes, this should have been caught a long time ago. We are just glad that we have an opportunity to try and fix this problem now.
What about the big print at the top of the ballot which says "TO VOTE FOR DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES, NONPARTISAN VOTERS MUST FIRST SELECT PARTY IN THE BOX BELOW"?
(Don't get me wrong: I believe that all these votes should be counted if the voter's intent is discernible, even if the bubble at the top isn't filled in, but I also think it's important for people to read the instructions on ballots, especially if it's their first time voting, or if they are using a type of ballot that is unfamiliar to them.)
He's in a strange position in this case: if I understand it correctly, he's charged with carrying out the policies that are requested by the state Democratic party. Would it make a difference if the request came from them?
jon
If you think your ballot and your polling place were badly handled, that the poll workers were badly trained and badly informed (and if the things people are saying are true, that seems to be the case), I have a solution for you!
Volunteer to work at the polls yourself!
I started working at the polls in 2002, as a reaction to the debacle in Florida in 2000. I can guarantee that these problems with not informing non-partisans about the 'extra' bubble to fill in DID NOT HAPPEN at my precinct. I personally saw to it that a dozen or more mis-marked ballots were corrected before they went into the ballot box.
If you want to ensure that these kinds of mistakes don't happen at your polling place, work there and make sure they don't.
If you want something done right, do it yourself!
Can someone find & post LA Registrar Dean Logan's phone number? I signed the petition, but their phone lines need to be jammed over this.
Change is now.
"Dean Logan" King County Washington
He's got a record I wouldn't be proud of.
Scott Herhold's Election snafu was obvious and avoidable in the San Jose Mercury News discusses some of the problems in Santa Clara County: poll workers had to photocopy 5,700 copies of the ballots, some of them at Kinko's! Link
One reason why:
"There are 170,452 "decline-to-state" voters in the county, 24 percent of the electorate. Under party rules, those voters are allowed to vote in the Democratic primary but not the Republican contest.
Before the election, the registrar sent out notices to the 82,000 "decline-to-state" mail-in voters, asking whether they wanted a Democratic ballot. About 21,000, roughly a quarter, eventually said yes."
They used this 25% rate to predict how many ballots they needed, as well as predicting that only 25% of the votes would be in-person. In practice, demand was much higher than expected on election day -- 45% of people voted in person. And many of the DTS voters wanted a Democratic ballot. So many sites ran out of Democratic ballots and had to photocopy them (some even at Kinkos!).
A likely conclusion from this is that most of the mail-in voters also wanted to vote for a presidential candidate, and even after they got notices, a bunch of people didn't realize they needed to reply to do this. Depending on what pecentage wanted to vote, that could easily mean up to another 20,000 or more voters disenfranchised.
And in any case: Kudos to Santa Clara county for following up with mail-in voters on the confusing ballots (as they're also doing in Pierce County, Washington). Shouldn't in-person voters get the same treatment?
And shouldn't people who live in LA County get the same chance to vote as people in Silicon Valley?
jon
I've been really disappointed by how little coverage this has gotten ... but maybe we can change that!
jon