READER COMMENTS ON

"L.A. County Registrar Says It's 'Impossible' to Count Nearly 100,000 Ballots from Super Tuesday Primary"

(40 Responses so far...)





COMMENT #1 [Permalink]

... Gentry Lange said on 2/12/2008 @ 11:42 pm PT...





Dean Logan was run outta King County Washington's elections by all us voting activists after so many years of this kind of behavior, and so none of us is suprised to find him doing the same kind of crap in LA.

COMMENT #2 [Permalink]

... Gentry Lange said on 2/12/2008 @ 11:47 pm PT...





Horse's Ass Blog, though, just thought Dean Logan was the cat's pajama's and his incompetence was somehow all just a Republican plot: http://www.horsesass.org/index.php?p=1721

COMMENT #3 [Permalink]

... Donna said on 2/13/2008 @ 3:59 am PT...





Brad, Ohio was told we can ask for paper ballots if we are in one of the 54 counties with touch screens. Union county prosecutor David Phillips an R, got Judge Richard Parrot an R, to stop the use of paper ballots.Theres a restraining order on SOS Brunners plan. They were supposed to be in court today the 13th, a judge Eric Brown will decide what to do. Not looking good for our getting the paper ballots.

COMMENT #4 [Permalink]

... Dredd said on 2/13/2008 @ 4:57 am PT...





I'll say it for you Brad, Conny McCormack should go to jail for stealing or destroying 100,000 votes, which are worth more than money ... and perhaps Logan too, for being an accomplice to a crime against democracy.

COMMENT #5 [Permalink]

... jaycee said on 2/13/2008 @ 7:33 am PT...





here is part of the long complicated explanation about the problem... "Therefore, it is impossible to determine with absolute certainty that a vote for a Presidential candidate without a mark for a party selection indicates clear voter intent to vote for a Democratic Party or American Independent Party Presidential candidate." It does not make sense to me. For example, If a person voted for Obama doesn't the registrar know that he is a democrat?

The specific party affiliation apparently required is totally irrelevant to the vote cast. Are LA voters voting for candidates or parties? or both? The party selection is stupid. If a vote for Obama (for example) is selected, then for heavens sake, what is so hard about counting that vote? Who cares whether the voter considers himself to be a dem or indie? Hey, I know, lets make it as difficult as possible for peoples' vote to count! seems to be the operating factor here. Stupid people really should be put out of the way. Outrageous! Have ya'll noticed that the closer we get to paper ballots, the more of this kind of confusion goes on?

COMMENT #6 [Permalink]

... Badger said on 2/13/2008 @ 8:30 am PT...





As I understand it, please correct me if I'm wrong, the candidate's names were not on the ballot. The ballot was apparently designed so that the first three positions were assigned to candidates running in both the American Independent Party or Democratic party. So the only, alleged way, to ID the ballot was that bubble indicating party at the top. Please correct this if I've got it wrong. If ever a design was set up to disenfranchise voters, this is on a par with the infamous butterfly ballot. However, some people may have written in a candidate too, perhaps? Weren't the voters assigned to booths depending on the party primary they were voting in? Wouldn't those ballots be in a separate bin from the AIP ballots? Seems there ought to be some way of figuring out the ballots if the bins were separate- and if they were not or if they were co-mingled later, that's just another straw on the camel's back of bad management. Yes, I agree that with the mandate to go to paper there seem to be more problems "created" with paper ballots. Texas and Ohio should not run into lack of paper ballots at the polls. The huge turnouts in the primaries are not exactly hidden from view.

COMMENT #7 [Permalink]

... Robin Gibson said on 2/13/2008 @ 9:58 am PT...





Brad,

take a look at the transcript of the Bof Sups yesterday, Tuesday. You have to see it to believe it. Yesterday the Supervisors signed a contract with a software company called SOE Software, from FLorida, which is partnering with Diebold to create election management software. They will now be managing our elections for the next 6 years. Of course, Dean presented it as a way to avoid future mishaps. The Sups did not care that this company is partnering with Diebold, it's owner was indicted for securities fraud, and it has already screwed up elections in Florida. Also see what the Sups have to say about the bubbles. (It wouldn't really make a difference, but we cannot have outraged voters, so Dean, make this problem go away.)One jam-packed 15 minutes. (listed as items 14, 15, and a special unnumbered item introduced by Zev, the no bubbles in June item.)

Robin

COMMENT #8 [Permalink]

... Brad Friedman said on 2/13/2008 @ 11:07 am PT...





Got a link handy, Robin?

COMMENT #9 [Permalink]

... NateTG said on 2/13/2008 @ 11:10 am PT...





"As I understand it, please correct me if I'm wrong, the candidate's names were not on the ballot. The ballot was apparently designed so that the first three positions were assigned to candidates running in both the American Independent Party or Democratic party. So the only, alleged way, to ID the ballot was that bubble indicating party at the top." The ballots in LA are like scantron sheets. I decline to state party affiliation, and elected not to vote in either of the half-open primaries, but the voting form I had showed spaces for both the Democratic primary and the American Independent primary.

COMMENT #10 [Permalink]

... OMSmedia said on 2/13/2008 @ 11:30 am PT...





DRE's would fix this problem...God forbid we go that direction...huh boys? Can i add this number to the 'disenfranchised by paper ballot' list? {ED NOTE: No you cannot, Don. See my full reply to your absurd, anti-democracy comment below. - BF}

COMMENT #11 [Permalink]

... Onyx said on 2/13/2008 @ 11:57 am PT...





Why does it matter what bubble they filled or whether they filled any bubble designating the party? How in hell does that effect the outcome? I can see how it might effect what ballot they received, but if the questions are on the ballot they must have received the correct ballot so why does it matter if they are independent democratic voters or American independent party voters if the ballot is the same? Does the American Independent Party have specific delegates assigned to them?

COMMENT #12 [Permalink]

... Brad Friedman said on 2/13/2008 @ 12:13 pm PT...





RE: The above note from OMSMedia. OMSMedia is Don Haas, brother of failed former San Diego County Registrar of Voters, Mikel Haas who never met a Diebold DRE he didn't love and a (non-Republican) voter he didn't hate. That said... No, Don, DRE's would not "fix" this problem. The good news is, because we had paper ballots, we KNOW that some 100,000 votes were miscounted. Had we used DRE's (touch-screens) millions of ballots could have been miscounted, and it would have been impossible to prove that any of them had been either counted correctly or counted incorrectly. IF Dean Logan, who seems to come from the same failed school of how to run elections that both your brother and Conny McCormack came from, refuse to count the ballots which are easily counted, then yes, you can add them to the "disenfranchised by Election Administrators" list. The paper ballots haven't disenfranchised them. Administrators like Logan and your brother (he did the same to thousands of voters in San Diego) have disenfranchised them. Way to keep up your anti-democracy agenda, Don. Somewhere, Josef Stalin is smiling down on you and your family.

COMMENT #13 [Permalink]

... Brad Friedman said on 2/13/2008 @ 12:20 pm PT...





Onyx #11 - Read my coverage of the problem from last week. On the Non-Partisan ballot, the choices for Dem Presidential candidate use the same bubbles as the choice for American Ind. Party Presidential Candidate. The ballots don't list names. They only have bubbles. The ballots must be slipped into a template booklet to know which bubble is meant for which candidate, etc. If one only looks at the ballot and sees a vote for some Presidential candidate or another, then unless they have marked the other bubble (Dem. vs. AI Party) you can't know for certain if the vote was intended for Dem candidate or for an AI candidate. However, the poll rosters have a notation in them if a Non-Partisan voter wanted to vote DEM or AI. In most precincts, there will be NO non-partisan voters who asked to vote for AI. Therefore, every NP ballot in that precinct with a Prez vote can reasonably be assumed to be a vote for one of the DEM candidates. Hope that clarifies. For the moment, nearly 100,000 votes are potentially miscounted. ANY counting of those ballots, by hand, will decrease the error rate with every single tabulation!

COMMENT #14 [Permalink]

... BOB YOUNG said on 2/13/2008 @ 12:40 pm PT...





You got one thing right Don Hass #10. Any God worth his salt would surely forbid that we be idiotic enough to go in that Anti-Democracy direction!

COMMENT #15 [Permalink]

... BOB YOUNG said on 2/13/2008 @ 1:24 pm PT...





Don Haas #10: My God had so little trust in the DRE that he banned your God (the DRE) with his very first commandment. I hear it went something like this:

"I am the Lord thy God and thou shalt not have any strange gods before me!"

So my God saw fit to eliminate the use of the faith based DRE right of the bat and then went on to lesser concerns.

COMMENT #16 [Permalink]

... Badger said on 2/13/2008 @ 1:30 pm PT...





Some very simple, cheap things that could have helped avert this travesty: Different colored ballots Just- simply- PRINTING THE NAME OF THE PARTY ON THE BALLOT, if it was too much effort to print the candidates names. The problem with paper voting for administrators like these, is that it does not cover up incompetence. Brad is correct, with DRE's, we would never know what happened. The only clue you get is more voters than people registered or out of whack results with the polls. In New Hampshire, the recounts have proven that the law was not followed. Just that alone is a huge issue and ought to be grounds for dismissal of the top two election officials in the state. Paper gives a way to audit the election, audit the process, and audit compliance with the law. A good administrator welcomes that scrutiny.

COMMENT #17 [Permalink]

... Mark A. Adams JD/MBA said on 2/13/2008 @ 4:31 pm PT...





Let's see. A voter forgot to bubble in Democrat, so the machine can't read the ballot where the voter bubbled in a vote for a Democratic candidate. The officer in charge of the election knows of no way to have the scanner ignore the bubble for the party and count the bubble for the vote cast for the candidate, and he sees no way to tell voter intent from looking at ballots with a vote bubbled in for a Democratic Presidential candidate. That’s even more ludicrous than the explanation that I received from the staff at the Virginia Board of Elections about how using computers to count votes doesn’t violate the Virginia Constitutional prohibition against counting votes in secret. Virginia’s Elections Are UNCONSTITUTIONAL?!?! Yes, Virginia, your elections are unconstitutional, and frankly, no one in power gives a damn! Technically, they say that they did not know that computers count in secret, that Virginia's Constitutional prohibition against counting votes in secret isn't really clear and doesn't Federal law control everything any way, and that no one even really thought about this secret vote counting issue that they know of. If you believe that, I’ve got a bridge to sell you, cheap. Just send cash, and I’ll send the papers right away. Don’t miss my article about this on OpEdNews.com You can find it in the Writers’ Archives under Mark Adams at http://www.opednews.com/author/author7855.html or http://www.opednews.com/author/author7840.html or go directly to the article at http://www.opednews.com/...virginia_s_elections.htm and don’t miss the video of me questioning the Virginia Board of Elections Staff. The link to it is in the first comment to this article that is too hot to handle. For information about action being taken in Florida, Texas, and Ohio to make sure that our votes are counted accurately, see Project Vote Count www.ProjectVoteCount.com For more election news that you didn’t hear about from the corporate media cartel or all of those organizations which claim that they are looking out for your rights, see Project Vote Count’s Election News http://www.projectvoteco...nt.com/ElectionNews.aspx To see the Zogby poll and other important information about voting, go to Project Vote Count’s FAQ page http://www.projectvotecount.com/faq.aspx To stay informed, sign up for Project Vote Count’s email list at www.ProjectVoteCount.com Everyone knows that the people are supposed to be able to peacefully remove bad leaders through elections, but what if those who control the machines, and their secret vote count, want bad leaders in power? Is there another way that citizens can prevent abuse of power without resorting to violence? Yes, there is or was another way to hold our governors accountable without resorting to violence. A few of you may already know about this, but if not, I’m sure that you’ll want to find out about the other civil check on government abuse of power that our Founders provided for us. If so, read What Happens When the People Lose the Power to Control Government and What You Can Do to Take the Power Back? http://www.opednews.com/...what_happens_when_th.htm If you care about the safety of your family, read this article now, and send it to all of your contacts today. Now is the time for action!

COMMENT #18 [Permalink]

... Linda said on 2/13/2008 @ 6:21 pm PT...





OMSMedia, electronic voting machines would NOT fix the problem created by a ROV who approves a stupidly designed ballot. Getting a new ROV who can look at a ballot critically WILL solve this problem for the future. Also, having ROVs who are not inappropriately chummy with the U.S. electronic voting machine cartel would be a big help as well. Electronic voting machines have nothing to do with this problem in LA, AND they carry with them a WHOLE NEW SET of problems. Being financially connected to the profits of the electronic voting machine industry disqualifies you from being able to be objective about this.

COMMENT #19 [Permalink]

... Linda said on 2/13/2008 @ 6:25 pm PT...





Brad, that is total BS that it's impossible to count those ballots. Is the LA ROV unable to count past his fingers and toes? If there is going to be a citizen effort to count those ballots, let me know. I will volunteer. Also, I will request that my local paper let its readers know that LA County is looking for citizens to participate in this counting. What involvement, if any, does our SoS have in this matter? If there's anything else that those of us on the outside can do to help, please let me know.

COMMENT #20 [Permalink]

... Goldy said on 2/13/2008 @ 7:05 pm PT...





Gentry @1 & @2, I've said it before and I'll say it again... you are a tool who can't keep his eye on the prize. We've had recounts halted in Florida and never started in Ohio. We've had touch screen machines in Florida magically producing 14% residual vote rates. We have Republicans nationwide purging the rolls of legally registered voters, while intimidating others, and we have numerous attempts to make voting more difficult when there is almost zero evidence of voter initiated polling place fraud. And yet... in WA state we conducted the ultimate audit in 2004 by hand counting every single ballot in the state. But it's Dean Logan and KC Elections you focus on. Get over it, and focus on the real threats to election integrity instead of the imagined ones.

COMMENT #21 [Permalink]

... Andrea Sea Namaste said on 2/14/2008 @ 3:56 am PT...





Hi, everyone, I have a friend who worked as a precinct captain in LA County and explained to me why the voter intent cannot be determined for non-partisan voters. Idiotically stupid ballot design, as follows: The computer cards with little bubbles just have numbers next to each bubble.

There are always plenty of extra numbers in unused columns on the cards, but some idiot decided to assign THE SAME NUMBERS to presidential candidates from various parties. So on my Democratic Ballot, it looks like this: VOTERS REGISTERED WITH DEMOCRATIC PARTY SKIP TO PRESIDENTIAL PREFERENCE'S CONTEST BELOW TO VOTE FOR DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES, NONPARTISAN VOTERS MUST FIRST SELECT PARTY IN THE BOX BELOW (This box for Non-Partisan Voters Only - Vote for One) American Indepent (no number!)

Democratic 6 PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

(Presidential Preference - Vote for One) Bill Richardson 8

Dennis Kucinich 9

Mike Gravel 10

John Edwards 11

Chris Dodd 12

Hillary Clinton 13

Joe Biden 14

Barack Obama 15 Now, I don't have an American Independent Ballot to type in for you, so I will have to make up some names, but here are the numbers those ballots have on them, according to my friend the precinct leader: (This box for Non-Partisan Voters only - Vote for One)

American Indepent (no number!)

Democratic 6 PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES

(Presidential Preference - Vote for One) Jane Doe 8

Luke Monroe 9

John Bledsoe 10

Green McClean 11

Warner Winsome 12

Andy Anderson 13

Taylor Made 14

Ty Coltrane 15 Additionally, to make sure that no candidate's name appears at the top or bottom of every ballot, each precinct has a different code, and the code on the ballot card has to match the code on the printed booklet that goes with it to indicate what the numbers mean. This allows the order of the names to be randomly rearranged for each precinct. So it's not like Barack Obama is #15 across all of Los Angeles. Other precincts could have Clinton or Richards as #15, and the problem is that if that damn bubble #6 isn't marked, you don't know whether #15 was for Obama (DEM) or my made-up American Independent candidate, Ty Coltrane. And to top it off, there are no marks on the cards that can be used to related them to the voter rolls where NP was crossed out and either AI or DEM written in, because the ballots are all the same, anonymous. Actually, this brings up another question, because I had the impression that ballots from registered democrats were able to be counted, and non-partisan voters who filled in Bubble #6 were able to be counted. But unless DEM ballots are going into one bin and NP or AI ballots are going into another bin, how do they know the difference between registered democratic votes (that weren't supposed to fill in bubble #6) and registered independent votes that failed to fill in bubble #6 ??? I took computer programming classes in college, and though I never worked as a programmer, I can see the idiocy of duplicating the definitions of numbers 8 through 15 when it would have been just as easy to have voters turn a page (to move to the next column of bubbles), and the next party's candidates could have been coded to bubbles #28 through #35, or whatever the numbers are in the next column over. THAT would have made it possible to determine voter intent, regardless of what party they were registered with: One number assigned to each candidate, with no duplicates. Idiots!!! Sorry this is so long, but I wanted to give you the necessary details, the better to rant with. Regards,

Andrea

COMMENT #22 [Permalink]

... Dredd said on 2/14/2008 @ 7:01 am PT...





What is impossible is to get braindead election officials to think. OT - I propose some election slogans for two campaigns:

We have met the enemy and it is us. - McCain We are the change we have been waiting for. - Obama Let every vote count!!!

COMMENT #23 [Permalink]

... Linda said on 2/14/2008 @ 8:17 am PT...





Andrea, your thorough description of the ballot problem in LA underscores that this problem would NOT be solved by doing away with paper ballots and replacing them with electronic voting machines. It can't be proven, I realize, but it really seems that these ballots were intentionally confusing and misleading to one voting demographic, non-partisan voters, who were predicted to vote mostly for Sen. Obama. That this is likely the case further underscores the case AGAINST replacing paper ballots with electronic voting machines, because with electronic voting machines, as they exist today, citizens would be unable at all to notice voting anomalies such as this one in LA, that disenfranchised non-partisan voters.

COMMENT #24 [Permalink]

... confabulator said on 2/14/2008 @ 9:46 am PT...





Good morning Linda, #23

I agree the ballot, and the process, is confusing and misleading for non-partisan voters, but I do not think it was intentionally so, because this destroys any chance for Acting Registrar/Recorder Dean Logan to be selected by the LA County Board of Supervisors to the permanent position and both Conny McCormack and Logan wanted Logan to get the job.

Logan was selected by McCormack to be her successor, but he already had at least one strike against him: no college degree. His job performance had to convince the Board to overlook this issue. Then "DoubleBubble" happened. LA's Board of Supervisors is predominately Democrats and this hurts mainly Democrats. The death of Logan's chances to be chosen for the permanent position was signalled when LA Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said at a board meeting that Logan's handling of this, "really angers me." This fiasco absolutely guarantees Logan will not be selected for the permanent position. And don't worry, no California county is planning to abandon paper in the forseeable future. First, they already spent a ton of taxpayer money for the systems paper systems they are now using and are unlikely to get support for the idea of abandoning their current certified system and buying a new, not yet certified non-paper system. And second, election equipment vendors have a serious disincentive to attempt to sell new non-paper systems in California because of the unsettled environment concerning certification requirements and changing laws. As Brad points out in his posting about Diebold's declining earnings, these issues include: - unanticipated litigation, claims or assessments;

- challenges raised about reliability and security of the company's election systems products, including the risk that such products will not be certified for use or will be decertified;

- changes in laws regarding the company's election systems products and services So for California, it's paper as far as the eye can see. Which is just fine with vendors because they sell paper-based systems, too.

COMMENT #25 [Permalink]

... Linda said on 2/14/2008 @ 9:52 am PT...





The more I think about this Dean Logan proclamation that it's impossible to count every voter's vote in LA County's primary, the madder I get. Make him admit that he's UNWILLING to count every voter's vote! Clearly, Dean Logan is not an Obama supporter, because he knows nothing about "Yes We Can!" Dean Logan is a defeatist. For all we know, he may believe in a hundred years of war, but he doesn't believe that we can spend the necessary time, which would be less than a hundred years, and the necessary money, which would be less than what we're spending in one minute to perpetuate the Iraq war, to successfully count LA County's presidential primary ballots. To steal a line from Obama's fantastic post-Potomac win speech in Madison, "What better time and place to affirm our democratic ideals than right now, in LA County, by counting every single voter's vote!"

COMMENT #26 [Permalink]

... CharlieL said on 2/14/2008 @ 10:22 am PT...





There are hundreds of different ways that corrupt election officials and those who influence them can steal elections. They can disenfranchise legal voters (look for 10-20 million new, predominantly poor, often young, predominantly black voters who got energized by the primary season find themselves somehow "missing from the rolls" in November in Obama is the candidate). They can design stupid, ill-conceived, and non-user-friendly ballots. They can fail to protect the votes from corruption. They can choose to void or spoil votes in a manner that is disadvantageous to one side, or only tell one side when a vote has been spoiled. They can steal votes. They can lose votes. (16K votes missing in a 250 vote race?) They can make it hard to vote (8 hours in the rain? That's Democracy) for those who don't have all day. And sadly, the Rethuglicans have done all these things (and thousands of others) before, and they will do them all again. Rethuglicans don't care about honest elections. They don't care about Democracy. They only care about WINNING AT ALL COSTS!!! Get used to it. Most of the Democrats just don't GET how ugly this is going to get, and they aren't prepared to fight. We will probably be here bloggin on November 5, 2008 about how it was a horrible election and millions of people were disenfranchised or forced to vote on non-counted provisional ballots and how the whole election was a fraud. On the plus side, if tens of millions of black people who WERE able to vote for Obama in the primaries suddenly find they can't vote for him in the general, I wouldn't want to be the white Rethuglican (or stupid Democrat) poll worker who tells the 10th black person that they aren't on the rolls while the other 9 are still standing behind him. It could (and should) get ugly. Of course, if there are riots at the polls on November 4, then Bush/Cheney can simply declare it a state of emergency and a threat to America and stop the whole process and declare Martial Law. ("This would be a whole lot easier if this were a dictatorship, as long as I'm the dictator.")

COMMENT #27 [Permalink]

... Badger said on 2/14/2008 @ 10:24 am PT...





Thank you Andrea. If this is so: "Actually, this brings up another question, because I had the impression that ballots from registered democrats were able to be counted, and non-partisan voters who filled in Bubble #6 were able to be counted. But unless DEM ballots are going into one bin and NP or AI ballots are going into another bin, how do they know the difference between registered democratic votes (that weren't supposed to fill in bubble #6) and registered independent votes that failed to fill in bubble #6 ???" OK, if that bubble #6 appeared on the Democratic ballots too, and there is no other identification on the ballot to indicate it's a Dem ballot, then your question is quite valid. And the point I made before about different bins is valid. Either there were different bins for the Dem and NP/AIP ballots, or the ballots were marked. And if there were different bins, what Brad has said about checking the poll books is valid and there is a chance to narrow down the disenfranchisement. If there were not different bins, then where did the Dem results come from? Perhaps this whole primary is invalid? If there were different bins and the ballots were mingled together after the Dem ballots were counted, is that normal SOP? It would be bad management if it were. Is there any other race/issue on that ballot that suffered from the same flaw? With all those bubbles available, there simply was no excuse for this and tends towards deliberate. It does not take a computer expert to figure out this is not the way to do it. But one wonders, without further information on the ballot handling, your question about how they could then determine the Dem ballots has to be answered. Interesting.

COMMENT #28 [Permalink]

... Brad Friedman said on 2/14/2008 @ 11:50 am PT...





The number of NP voters who chose to vote in the AI primary is incredibly small. So far, I've been unable to find a poll worker who said any NP voter chose to vote AI at their polling place. In a worst case scenario, counting EVERY NP ballot that had a choice for presidential candidate (even if it was in the same bubble for a potential AI vote) would decrease the current error rate where every NP Presidential vote without the second bubble filled in is currently being miscounted. Of the (conservatively stated) 50,000 or so ballots, 100% of them are currently miscounted. Counting ANY of them as Dem ballots will reduce the current error rate with every single ballot counted. Again, I'll repeat, Logan is full of shit.

COMMENT #29 [Permalink]

... Dusty said on 2/14/2008 @ 12:09 pm PT...





Brad,

Very nicely put, " Dean Logan is full of shit." These people have to be making a concious effort to screw up the vote.

COMMENT #30 [Permalink]

... NateTG said on 2/14/2008 @ 12:27 pm PT...





In response to Andrea #21: I voted in Los Angeles county as a decline to state voter, on the ink-a-vote card. Although I did not choose to participate in either of the primaries, the booth that I was in did (as far as I can recall) have separate pages for the parties.

COMMENT #31 [Permalink]

... Dredd said on 2/14/2008 @ 12:53 pm PT...





CharlieL #26 Well said. May I add that they can let "super delegates" do the voting and thereby thwart the people. The preznit blush had 5 supreme delegates to vote him in (Rehnquist, Scalia, Thomas, O'Connor, Kennedy). There are many more than that in the dem process, however more is not enough. ALL is the only way ... all the votes a candidate gets from the people. ALL. No more, no less.

COMMENT #32 [Permalink]

... wrs said on 2/14/2008 @ 1:25 pm PT...





re: Linda -

"If there is going to be a citizen effort to count those ballots, let me know. I will volunteer. Also, I will request that my local paper let its readers know that LA County is looking for citizens to participate in this counting. What involvement, if any, does our SoS have in this matter?" None whatsoever - this wasn't a state election, nor is it an official one. Due to the democracy hating media and the democrublican party conspiracy, primaries for the 2 major political parties are often discussed as though they were state or federal elections. They are not. It's easy to misunderstand, but the parties are actually simply paying to use the voting facilities of the states to determine their candidates. This isn't a real election except in the sense that the parties have legally given themselves the right to steal tax dollars to partially offset the cost of their "choosings". What did I just say? The political parties in question are paying (part of the cost) of running a choosing process ("election") for their candidate. A primary is NOT a real election - not one single vote has to be counted, nor is there any requirement other than party rules that says that all votes must be counted. A primary can just as easily be run as an internet poll and a party boss can stop the poll after 2 votes. STATE AND LOCAL OFFICIALS HAVE NO SAY OVER PRIMARY EVENTS. NONE. The primary is run by the parties- to the extent state / local workers make choices or are involved at all is typically habit or convenience. (I say that generally - in some cases the parties have actually been able to write in laws specific to primaries to try and insert their specific party processes into the law and essentially force the democracy to forever recognize, and eventually totally pay for, their candidate selections.) Of course this is not obvious to most people because these two political parties have worked hard to warp the media, warp the laws, and warp the democratic process to make you think that 400 million people should, could, and can only have 2 choices when voting - democrat or republican. It's certainly absurd enough to be funny, except the tragic element, in that the media reports on this propaganda, and all this "election" activity, as though it's appropriate. Let me ask you - how many media outlets, including this blog, have reported multiple stories...1 story? About the libertarian primary process or candidates? Reform party? Anyone? Well, the media hates democracy so much (It's inconvenient to do all that fair and balanced reporting), that they wholly contribute to totally excluding other parties or individuals. How realistic is it for 3rd/4th/5th parties to compete in an environment when even the 4th estate, our supposed last resort protectors, create an environment where the democrat and republican parties, the democrublican machine, get thousands of hours worth of free media time? I have not heard the words "libertarian candidate" once used in the past year or so of campaigning. In spite of my admiration for Brad, Raw Story, and similar independent media sites, I have to say - shame on you. You could just have easily reported on election problems without repeating the key phrases the parties want to use - democrat or republican, in every story. And we could see a few actual stories about other party candidates. I realize it may not be as juicy, but with respect to some kind of fair "airtime", as least posting links in stories to information about other parties seems like a reasonable thing to do, without taking away from the money generating headline stuff. Please don't help with this conspiracy to hold us all hostage to a single party with 2 heads. A few regular links, if not actual news, to remind people that actual options do exist might go a long way. Even better, in my opinion, is simply to stop pretending that these are huge differences and simply call them politicians. Party affiliation is hardly relevant when 2 parties claim they can actually represent the differing views of hundreds of millions - the obvious generality and overlap of their positions, and inconsistency, makes the distinctions largely meaningless. And if you doubt that, perhaps you should ask whether the so called lack of "democrat spine" in "defying" the republicans isn't more like "more of the same politicians doing more politician stuff" and not really doing their duty. Why should they, when everyone is helping them to not represent actual public interests, which must obviously and necessarily fall outside only 2 options? If I were them I'd be feeling fat and lazy too. And happy, since the media is falling all over itself to report on "internal" party events that bear no relation to the actual election, while crushing third parties before the democrats or republicans even have to make an effort. So Linda - if you are really a concerned citizen, then you don't help the political parties count their ballots. You make them pay people to do it, and help the libertarian, green, reform, socialist, etc. parties count for free, to make up for all the time you've help them get screwed over by equating citizenship with helping "democrats" or "republicans" "elect" someone.

COMMENT #33 [Permalink]

... Linda said on 2/14/2008 @ 1:58 pm PT...





WRS #32, while I agree with a lot of what you wrote, here's a problem I have with your post, a problem that others may have as well. In your commentary/opinion, you blurred lines between fact and opinion to an extent that brings to mind for me how FOX "news" does the same thing. You did it so much that I had to stop frequently, even multiple times within one sentence, to determine where the facting ends and the opinionating begins. Look, you can write like that if you want to, but you're going to lose a lot of readers, readers who might otherwise really identify with your opinionating, like me, but who would rather be able to easily see what the facts are upon which you are basing your opinions. Anyway, I usu gloss over posts that use that style, but in this case I did not, because you directed some of what you wrote to me. Some very, very intelligent, critically-thinking, reasoned people do not share some of your opinions, opinions that you present as fact. "So WRS - if you are really a concerned citizen, ..." (See what I mean?) I could actually make the case that parties other than the two major ones are part of a vast conspiracy to dismantle our representative democracy, even though I don't think that.

COMMENT #34 [Permalink]

... Linda said on 2/14/2008 @ 2:08 pm PT...





Oh, and there is actually a very good case that can be made for deprivatizing elections, to the extent that that is reasonably attainable. Imagine our elections officials having teams of people to come in and work on elections problems, elections consulting firms that bid on elections problems contracts ahead of time, and that are dependent on there being problems for them to solve, such as recounts of poorly designed ballots. In this day and age of the privatization of everything, this scenario is not so hard to imagine.

COMMENT #35 [Permalink]

... confabulator said on 2/14/2008 @ 4:20 pm PT...





WRS #32

The comment that California's Secretary of State has no role in primary elections and that the parties pay for even part of the costs of election administration is absolutely false. WRS's claim contradicts the provisions of the Elections Code that define elections, including primaries, as state elections. (Elections Code section 318) Elections Code sections 1000 et seq. specify that primary elections are state elections and are conducted by local elections officials, with the secretary of state serving as the state’s chief elections officer of the state. The February presidential primary election was specifically established by Chapter 2, Statutes of 2007 (SB 113) and it expresses the intent of the Legislature that the state of California (state taxpayers) will pay the cost of this particular primary. Counties (county taxpayers) have paid the costs of administering this primary election, and now the counties have seek reimbursment from the state. (good luck) Brad, I believe that comments such as WRS #32, even when clearly and completely wrong, should be allowed to be posted but I think by now my posts should be allowed to appear soon after I send them to you. As you know, you have me "on probation" and I gather that my posts do not appear under you have an opportunity to review them and approve them for posting. A few days ago it too 6 hours for my post to appear. This morning it only took and hour and forty minutes. It's your blog and you are the decider. But by now you may agree that I have been "more responsible." My point is, posts like WRS #32 can seriously sidetrack discussion and I think my response, and those of others, should have an opportunity to appear on the blog in a timely manner. Anyhoo, WRS #32 is wrong, dead wrong.

COMMENT #36 [Permalink]

... Robert Earle said on 2/15/2008 @ 2:11 pm PT...





Badger at #6

"Weren't the voters assigned to booths depending on the party primary they were voting in?" Yes, except that non-partisan voters who indicated that they wanted to 'cross-over' to the Democratic primary would have been directed to a Democratic voting booth. (A non-partisan who wanted to cross-over to the AI primary would have - at least at the precinct where I was working - ended up in the same booth whether they were 'crossing over' to AI, or voting true non-partisan. That booth was a sort-or 'misc/other booth, where Greens, Peace and Freedom, Libertarians, etc, were directed. But the "AI page" in that booth certainly had the 2nd AI bubble, bubble #5 - as opposed to the Dems' bubble #6). "Wouldn't those ballots be in a separate bin from the AIP ballots?" I'm not sure what you mean by 'separate bin'. At the polling place, all ballots went into the same ballot box, completely mixed together. I am sure that later, when the votes were taken 'downtown' to a counting center, they were separated out by ballot type. But not at the polling place. Badger at #16 (and again at #27)

"Some very simple, cheap things that could have helped avert this travesty: "Different colored ballots "Just- simply- PRINTING THE NAME OF THE PARTY ON THE BALLOT, if it was too much effort to print the candidates names" The ballots used, as well as other materials, were color coded. For example, if you still have your sample ballot booklet, you can see the colors I'm talking about. The ballots, the signs in the voting booths, the sample ballot booklets are all color coded. The Republicans were a sort-of lavender-purple; Dems a sort-of mustard-brown. Non-partisans, if I remember correctly, were yellow. In the voting booths, the signs indicating the type of booth it was - 'REP' 'DEM' - were of that party's color. I spent most of the day as the person taking ballots from the voters and feeding them into the scanner and into the ballot box. Because of this color coding, I could see from across the room what type of voter was coming, and when it was a non-partisan, I made sure to manually check if they had correct;y marked their "double bubble"; about a dozen that I saw had not; when I saw that, i explained to them a second time (the ballot clerk had already explained once) what they needed to do, and sent them back to their booth to mark the 2nd bubble. And the ballots certainly had the name of the party (or Non-Partisan') printed on them. Andrea at #21

You are closer than you might think with your names (although there were only three AI candidates) - one of them was actually named on the ballot "Mad Max Rieske" Badger at #27

"Is there any other race/issue on that ballot that suffered from the same flaw?" Not this time, but almost certainly in the primaries of 2002, 2004, and 2006.

COMMENT #37 [Permalink]

... Big Dan said on 2/15/2008 @ 6:09 pm PT...





Just wonderin'...is 100,000 voters being disenfranchized getting much coverage on ANBCBSNNX?

COMMENT #38 [Permalink]

... molly said on 2/16/2008 @ 5:24 am PT...





#37 When the votes were coming in on Super Tuesday..CNN..Wolfie says "Umm I hear there are some problems with the voter counts...do you know anything about that John?" John King, " No, I don't." John King used to sit on the front seat of the WH press corpse with David Gregory. They asked the most hard hitting questions. Then suddenly King was working for CNN and Gregory for MSNBC. They never discovered Jeff Gannon was a male hooker sitting in there midst for 2 years. Fascism is boring as hell.

COMMENT #39 [Permalink]

... Dredd said on 2/16/2008 @ 9:31 am PT...





Even tho not from CA I signed and made the comment:

We are watching from afar and ask you to please set a good example and follow the law and count the votes.

COMMENT #40 [Permalink]

... Linda said on 2/16/2008 @ 10:55 am PT...

