Filling in the Ovals on LA County's Super Tuesday 'Double Bubble' Debacle

[BradBlog]

Filling in the Ovals on LA County's Super Tuesday 'Double Bubble' Debacle
Confusion Reigns, Legal Challenges Loom as Hundreds of Thousands Votes May Not be Counted Due to Maddeningly Confusing Ballot Design, Procedures

We believe we've can now pull this issue up out of the weeds a bit, after more than 24 hours of trying to make sense of what the Los Angeles County Registrar's office has been describing to the media as "real clear".

What's clear, is that the only thing that's clear is the fact that the county's new acting Registrar of Voters, Dean Logan has seriously blown his first outing since coming South from his disastrous 2004 Washington state gubernatorial election debacle.
Unless swift action is taken by Logan and CA Sec. of State Debra Bowen, it's likely that hundreds of thousands of voters will have been disenfranchised in last Tuesday's Democratic Primary Election.

Please read on for the complete, astounding story...

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

[MADem]

1. Well, California has a lot of swell people in it, but that crowd elected AHHH-Nuld.

Which is kind of ....... interesting.

[Peace Patriot]

5. How do you know that they elected Arnold Schwarzenegger? nt

[MADem]

9. How do you know they didn't? No one challenged the results, did they? NT

[HopeforChange]

2. There you have it... What happened in California. n/t

[MADem]

3. Yep. All those disenfranchised independent Latino voters...

Clinton's margin may have been even larger.

[Peace Patriot]

6. How do you know how the Latino voters in Los Angeles voted? nt

[MADem]

8. Check the exit polls. CNN had a detailed breakdown up. nt

[Nailzberg]

4. Fuckers gave me the wrong ballot?

It appears that my vote was counted, but shit, they can't hand me the right ballot?

[Peace Patriot]

7. See "California Election Integrity Assessment 2008," at

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=132x4380748

...for detail on CA's and Los Angeles' election system. In L.A., 4 million voting cards are hauled to one location--the election office in Norwalk-- before any tallying takes place--and then are all dumped into the maw of what is probably a Diebold GEMS tabulator, run on "TRADE SECRET," PROPRIETARY programming code, and, if it's Diebold (the county won't say), owned and controlled by a corporation with very close ties to the Republican Party and the Bush/Cheney regime. But Diebold or not, it's "TRADE SECRET" vote tabulation, in a highly SECRETIVE process that citizen activists have yet been permitted to see even the outside dumb box of, let alone the innards.

And, considering who the head of elections in L.A. has been, for over a decade--leader of the pack of corrupt county officials who have viciously resisted and sabotaged all efforts of election reform and transparency--Conny McCormack (who resigned Dec 07)--and, given that her hand-picked successor, Dean Logan, is now in charge in L.A., it is no surprise at all to see a major disenfranchisement mess like this develop...and, lo and behold, one that hurts the contender (Obama) against a major corporate shill (Clinton). But I have to say this about McCormack--her service to Diebold, ES&S and co., was smoother than Logan's. I suspect they've been shaving votes off from good government candidates for years in L.A., and (s)electing the corrupt ones (and helping to (s)elect them, in state and national races).

You can't review Conny McCormack's history and that of her buds in San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Contra Costa and other "bad actor" counties, and not realize that something's up. The bare facts of the election system tell you that: It's egregiously non-transparent. Add the activism of these county registrars in suing secretaries of state to prevent modest reforms, and everything else they've done (sales brochures for Diebold; driving SoS Kevin Shelley out of office, after he sued Diebold for fraud in 2004), and the case becomes overwhelming--mindbogglingly overwhelming--that our votes are not secure, and the results cannot be trusted.

Our new reforming SoS Debra Bowen has only been in office a year--and already McCormack is carping at her and bad-mouthing her reforms. Steve Weir--the head of the county registrars' lobbying group (and Contra Costa County Registrar), said of Bowen, and I quote, “This election, if it's a failure, it's on her.”

Weir - 8/12/07
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/state/20070812-9999-1n12bowen.html

And here's McCormack's diatribe of five days ago:
http://www.whittierdailynews.com/ci_8153626?source=rss

And here's a gaggle of them--Weir, Deborah Seiler, Registrar of San Diego (and former chief salesperson for Diebold in Calif--no kidding), with SB and Riverside cited, predicting slow returns and blaming that on SoS Bowen's reforms. Instead of urging patience, and saying, 'Having a paper ballot and better auditing is good," they emphasize the problems and Seiler even laments having to protect paper ballots from the rain (apparently predicted at that time, although I wonder whose 10-day forecast she was consulting, cuz there wasn't any rain). I think she just wanted to pile on the horrible complications of having to count some actual ballots, and having to follow the law, and she it was who instigated the lawsuit against SoS Bowen, to stop better auditing rules. (Seiler & co. lost that lawsuit, fortunately, 1/29/08.) These are McCormack's cohorts talking.

http://www.contracostatimes.com/ci_8157074?source=rss

And here are links to those articles and more discussion of them:

"Election Reform, Fraud and Related News. Sunday 02/03/08"
(Comments 2,16 and 7)
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=203x496612