I got an email in my inbox this morning discussing the trouble that was had by independents in voting in the Democratic primary. I typed it into the DKos search and found nothing covering this issue. I'm cautious as to its accuracy but there have been several newspaper reports such as the Sacramento Bee which state that 94,000 independent voters in LA County might not have been counted in the Primary.
Links below the fold...
Sac Bee...
A major voting disaster Tuesday shows the pitfalls of having each of the state's 58 counties set its own rules and ballot designs. Voters in Los Angeles County who belong to no party ("decline-to-state" voters) and who wanted to vote in the Democratic presidential primary on Tuesday got a raw deal.
Where most counties simply give nonpartisan voters a party ballot at their request, Los Angeles County gives nonpartisan voters a separate ballot that requires voters to fill out a bubble for the presidential candidate of their choice – and a second bubble for a political party.
Many voters do not see and do not fill out the second bubble – and, thus, their votes do not count.
The scale of disenfranchisement is huge – 94,500 of 189,000 decline-to-state votes. That's half of the nonpartisan ballots. By comparison, in the infamous Florida "butterfly ballot" debacle in the 2000 presidential election, 19,120 Palm Beach County ballots went uncounted because of the bad ballot design.
Link to the Courage Campaign Blog
Well everything that Courage Campaign was worried about seems to be happening as the Los Angeles ballot issue turns into a full debacle. The San Francisco Chronicle is is running with the story and raising the question of how long this ballot has been in use.
Reactions from many of the players involved can be found on the flip, but here's the short version. Given the convoluted delegate system in California, a lot of delegates on the Democratic side could potentially be impacted by voting irregularities in Los Angeles county. And since the Democratic race appears to be destined to remain deadlocked for quite some time, this mess may stretch on for quite a while as delegate counts are fought over by interests that stretch way beyond Los Angeles County. That's the pragmatism. The principle is that the law should be followed and people should be allowed to vote.
Petition to get it right...
Any comments that might update the situation would be helpful. I haven't been following this but it sure is shocking. As a registered independent in California, I'm glad I filled in the bubble, but geez if I hadn't!