Up to 100K Los Angeles voters likely won't have ballots counted

[Blue State Bandit]

Source: Raw Story

As many as 100,000 independent voters in Los Angeles did not -- and most likely will not -- have their ballots counted in last week's Democratic presidential primary because of an unnecessarily complex system, inadequately trained poll workers and little effort by elections officials to notify voters of the proper procedures, according to news reports and voting-rights activists.
-snip-

Read more: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/Up_to_100K_Los_Angeles_voters_0211.html

[Blue State Bandit]

1. This becomes a delegate allocation question

LA consists of about 16 CD's about 5 delegates per, around 90 delegates.

Pending on the distribution of uncounted vote per CD, it can be rightfully assummed that as the

delegate allocation prossess goes from CD to County, to State, Obama could have lost a state

delegate or even 2. Now I'm no Chuck Todd, but this sounds like it need's such scrutiny.

Any math wizzes out there want to tack a crack at it?


http://www.latimes.com/media/acrobat/2008-01/35079705.pdf">Link to California CD/Delegate Map

[Political Heretic]

2. I don't care if it benefited Clinton or Obama - that is COMPLETELY unacceptable.

[EFerrari]

3. It hurt Obama as they were Indys. And, I agree with you. n/t

[aquart]

5. I completely agree.

[mod mom]

9. It's like the Jim Crow "tests" of days past-you had to understand what "nonpartisan" means

Totally unacceptable! Count the votes!

Here's discussion over at the election reform forum:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=203&topic_id=496986&mesg_id=496986

[Doctor_J]

4. Practice for November

It will be nearly impossible this November to have your vote cast/counted in Dem-heavy precincts.

[HowHasItComeToThis]

6. AND SO IT BEGINS

[tinrobot]

7. It was quite confusing.

The poll worker was kind enough to tell me to check box 6 because I was registered non-partisan. It took me by surprise and when I got in the voting booth I was still confused as to exactly what she told me to do. So I dragged her over to the voting booth so she could point out the box to check. Thank goodness she was nice.

I can easily see how someone with a less trained or polite poll worker would get confused - and that 100,000 votes is proof.

[SoCalDem]

8. This BLOWS..

1, you take a ballot
2. you mark "clinton", "obama", "Mccain".."whoever"
3. the fact that you got that ballot proves you were
independent on registration
4. both parties voted on the same day
5. you only voted ONCE

That vote for president should count.. why one earth would it NOT??

The "un-bubbled" voted just need to be HAND COUNTED... that was the REASON for paper ballots.. SO THEY COULD BE HAND COUNTED TO DETERMINE THE WISHES OF THE VOTER..

[Karenina]

10. Like they give a flying rat's ass

about the "wishes" of the voters. Just another practice run for November. WHAT A SCAM!

[Eric J in MN]

13. What do you think of Secretary of State Debra Bowen?

"Logically we know that most of these ballots were Democratic, because the number of American Independent Party voters is very small," Secretary of State Debra Bowen told the Times. "But in a democracy we don't guess what the voter's intent was."

They could allocate votes based 95% of those votes to the Democratic candidates and 5% to the American Independent Party, or whatever the percentage of party members is among the voters.

[SoCalDem]

17. INDEPENDENTS COULD VOTE IN EITHER ONE, DEBRA

It does not MATTER what their party is...They TOLD YOU they were INDEPENDENT..:grr:

[rumpel]

11. if you have not signed the petiton to Logan

to count those votes - as of today's e-mail courage campaign says he still refuses

here is the link:

http://www.couragecampaign.org/page/s/counteveryvote

[Kajsa]

14. Thanks for the link,Rumpel.

I thought I signed this last week, but to be sure,
I signed it, again.

This is outrageous!

[Peace Patriot]

22. Our election system is run like the Iraq War--as a corporate looting expediton...

Here's my message of L.A. country Registrar Dean Logan, in the comment section of the petition. I am especially proud of my analogy to the Iraq War...


"Dear Registrar Logan: If your mentor Conny McCormack hadn't wasted $25 million on ES&S scanners that do nothing but over-vote checking, and millions to Diebold for the Absentee Ballot concession, and touchscreens for early voting, and other corporate boondoggles, perhaps you'd have had the money to train poll workers and wouldn't be inflicted with an election system that is run like the Iraq War--as a corporate looting expedition. Big private corporations don't care about good government--they positively detest it, in fact--and create incompetence and corruption in democratic institutions wherever they can get their talons in, to cripple our ability to regulate them in the public interest. This "decline to state" debacle is a classic example, apart even from possible worse intent (to rig the primary election). Ban private corporations from our election system, and we will see competence, accountability and a culture of public service magically return. It's as simple as that. Choose the People, Mr. Logan! Get out from under the McCormack/corporate shadow, cuz the People are watching this time, and we are good and sick of corporate interference in our elections and their lapdog "public officials" who serve them, not us."

Feel free to use it!

[Eric J in MN]

12. The instructions don't say, "Mark which party's primary you're voting in."

Instead the instructions say, "SELECT PARTY" which sounds like they're asking non-partisan voters to mark which party they belong to.

In Minnesota for the Democratic caucus, voters put a checkmark next to their candidate.

If they did that in LA, then this problem wouldn't have happened.

[Dukkha]

15. Voter reform needs to be Clinton's or Obama's first priority!

remove all electronic machines. paper ballots only
implement a new third party independent system for vote count accuracy and audits
abolish the "super delegates"
abolish the electoral college!

[Eric J in MN]

18. These were paper ballots, but they had terrible design....

...in which the same space were used to mark for different candidates.

[Hawaii Hiker]

16. As Barack Obama says "the fierce urgency of now"

Well, there should be a fierce urgency of now to fix these f-ing voting irregularities....Jesus, what century are we in, why are there always voting issues in Democratic leaning cities/states!.....For fucks sake, why can't they fix these God damn problems....First, it's Florida/Ohio, now it's LA County!...

What's next, voting problems in New York City, all ballots lost for boroughs of Manhattan, Brookyln, Queens, Staten Island, & the Bronx....

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead: :banghead:

[Dumak]

19. You would think that the after the

highly publicised ballot design problem in FL that this could not happen again. Who the f**k is in charge of this? Or let me guess - there's no central entity in charge at all, thus nobody to blame.

[Universitario]

20. Is there a source other than the Raw Story?

I'd love to see this in a major publication.

[BrotherBuzz]

21. AP story last week - San Francisco Chronicle carried it....

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2008/02/07/state/n191020S51.DTL&type=politics

[diva77]

23. so combined with early voters who voted for candidates no longer running

the number of people whose votes did not count is probably much higher than the number listed by Raw Story:mad: