L.A. County Registrar Prepares to NOT Count Thousands of 'Double Bubble' Democratic Ballots

[BradBlog]

L.A. County Registrar Prepares to NOT Count Thousands of 'Double Bubble' Ballots from Super Tuesday's Democratic Primary
New Planned Method for Counting Uncounted Non-Partisan Crossover Ballots, as Proposed by Dean Logan in Response to Sec. of State's Request, Will Needlessly Disenfranchise Thousands of Legal Voters
SoS Bowen Must Intervene Again to Assure All Votes That Can be Counted ARE Counted...

I hate to counter the adulation of so many of the good groups out there claiming "victory" and "a happy ending" today in the "Double Bubble" ballot dispute in Los Angeles County, but I must.

The "victory" they are now referring to, with the best of intentions, as "Great news!" is much less than it appears. Though if you don't look closely, it might otherwise look like a "victory." Unfortunately, it isn't.

Unless something changes, and quickly, Los Angeles County's acting Registrar of Voters Dean Logan is preparing to disenfranchise thousands of voters who cast legal ballots in the Super Tuesday Democratic primary election.

In the 3-page letter sent by Logan to CA Sec. of State Debra Bowen yesterday, the recently-arrived, but still-befuddled, county clerk details how he now plans to potentially toss out thousands of votes, while inappropriately awarding disproportionate votes in favor of only some candidates, in response to the "Double Bubble" ballot debacle reported by The BRAD BLOG (most recently here), in great detail previously.
Though Bowen -- echoing both the law and the Constitution of the state of California -- directed Logan on Feb. 14th to "count each and every vote in every case in which the voter's intent can be clearly determined," he will not be doing so, if his insulting, unfair, and arguably illegal counting scheme currently proposed, proceeds as planned.

Los Angeles, and all of California's voters, should be outraged…

MORE, FULL COVERAGE: http://www.bradblog.com/?p=5746

(UPDATED 2/27/08 2:00pm PT, after speaking with Bowen's office about this, and her response to Logan's proposed counting scheme. See the bottom of the complete article, as linked above, for the updated detail and comments from Bowen.)

[HCE SuiGeneris]

1. K n R

[marions ghost]

2. double bubble

toil and trouble.

Get rid of hanging chads and we give you double bubbles. :banghead:

[ContinentalOp]

3. Jeez, I just tried to read all of the info at that link.

The controversy over this is way more confusing than the actual ballot was.

[Politicalboi]

4. I think they should count the votes in real time at each polling place

That way if they have a problem with something like a hanging chad or a no vote it could be resolved right there. You could have your vote secret or not. I really don't care and would rather have it clear before I left who I voted for. I think they should have specific voting offices and the vote gets counted before you leave. They should have tallies at each poll so you know what the numbers are.

[Igel]

5. Interesting semantics problem for lawyers.

Are the two processes the same, legally?

On the one hand, you evaluate each ballot, determine the intent of each voter, and total the votes.

On the other hand, you evaluate the ballots as a group to determine the mathematical properties of the subtotals, and then evaluate what the minimum number of votes that each of the major candidates (disregarding the minor candidates) must have been, thereby approximating the intent of the voters as a group.

Evaluate then sum, or sum then evaluate. In a perfect world, they'd yield the same result. In this case, they don't achieve anything close to the same results. "Count each and every vote" seems to argue for evaluating the ballots as individuals before counting, leading to massive ballot disqualification since it's at the level of the individual ballot that there is no heuristic for determining which party a voter was voting in; "determine the will of the electorate with the greatest accuracy possible" would be doing it the other way, that that disregards determining the intent of each voter.

I'd be interested to hear how lawyers familiar with the code and relevant cases interpret it.

On edit: Ah, English shows plurality on nouns. Oops.