OK, this is not Ohio or Washington, but all the same, I was surprised not to see anything about this. So I took it upon myself to bring it up. Sorry if I missed it and it got by me somehow.
Who knows, maybe you are ready to move past the election. But here are votes that show clear voter intent, could change the outcome, but were not counted!
I was listening to NPR this morning and heard a story of clear voter disenfranchisement. Of votes that were cast, but not counted, for a candidate. This is not Governor of Washington State, this is not Ohio, this is not Florida. It is for the Mayor of San Deigo.
OK, OK, so you think - Big Deal! Who cares who is mayor of San Diego. It seems to me that this is the big deal. If we can't get these votes counted, then the system really is in trouble. Enough drama, on to the facts:
Councilwoman Donna Frye is a surfer who doesn't have a driver's liscence. She mounted a last minute write-in candidacy for Mayor of San Diego and won! er - lost, well... sort of...
According to the totals certified by
Sally McPherson, she lost by 2108 votes. However, Frye actually recieved an additional
5547 votes that were never counted!
How is that possible, you may ask? Well, because the voter did not fill in the bubble next to the line where they wrote in Frye's name. Now, tell me how they can possibly not devine voter intent from that? Well, according to McPherson, Elections Code Sec. 15342(a) doesn't allow it:
15342. Any name written upon a ballot for a qualified write-in
candidate, including a reasonable facsimile of the spelling of a
name, shall be counted for the office, if it is written in the blank
space provided and voted as specified below:
(a) For voting systems in which write-in spaces appear directly
below the list of candidates for that office and provide a voting
space, no write-in vote shall be counted unless the voting space next
to the write-in space is marked or slotted as directed in the voting
instructions.
Guess what? Looks like she is right! But doesn't this seem like there is something wrong with this law? Isn't the intent of the voter a constitutional right? Shouldn't it take precidence over the law? Especially when it is so clear?
It seems to me that voting should not be a test. When the will of the voter is that clear, it should be counted. There were other ballots that were counted with out the oval filled in, if there was just an X or some other mark. But then, the Elections Code allows for that. On the NPR show, they even said that two votes were counted that were submitted on SAMPLE ballots!
It seems that we are bending over backwards to make sure that votes get counted properly everywhere, and the will of the voter is followed. Isn't there something we can do here?
For a lot more on this, you can go here or here or here.
Oh, did I mention that Dick Murphy, the guy she "lost" to was sworn in last week?