More on the DTS ballot problems in CA - Indy vote impacted:

[EFerrari]

(02-06) 00:14 PST SAN FRANCISCO -- --

Long lines of voters - may be record turnout
Jim Doyle, John Coté,Carla Marinucci, Chronicle Staff Writers
Wednesday, February 6, 2008

An extraordinary surge of California voters cast ballots in Tuesday's presidential primary - resulting in long lines, a shortage of ballots, criticisms about voting procedures and polls that remained open late in Alameda County.

(big snip)

Polls were still open in California when the first challenges were raised Tuesday to the design of ballots and voting procedures that progressive advocates - and the campaign of Sen. Barack Obama - said discouraged and confused millions of "decline-to-state" voters.

The Courage Campaign, a California grassroots group whose partners include Common Cause and MoveOn.org, prepared to mount a legal challenge to the Los Angeles County voting system, charging that confusing procedures in that major urban area could disenfranchise the estimated 776,000 voters there who declined to state a party affiliation.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/02/06/MNQOUSIIM.DTL

[EFerrari]

1. I'm going to kick this a couple of times so people can see it.

Imho, we may have just found those mythical Latinos who didn't vote for Obama.

[KittyWampus]

2. I'm sorry this happened in your backyard.

[EFerrari]

6. I was expecting problems like this pretty much all over.

Our elections systems are in a lot of turmoil right now.

It's a shame to see people being denied their vote.

[Helga Scow Stern]

21. Me too, all over the state, but especially in Los Angeles.

Isn't Connie McCormack still there, with her husband's InkaVote system?

Regardless of who our candidate is, we need to put that aside and take these matters very seriously. If they get away with it now, we can only imagine what will happen at the GE.

And it looks like a fuss is going to be made about how long it takes to sort it all out because Bowen and Shelly made them get rid of the machines.

[EFerrari]

24. Good news: Connie retired when Debra was voted in.

And, I don't know about the Times, but the Chronicle started attacking Debra when she decertified those POS machines. Some of us up here called out the Editorial Page Editor and let him know in no uncertain terms that if he tried to smear her as Shelley had been smeared, he'd have a fight on his hands. (Imagine his surprise that anyone was paying attention!)

I expected problems in L.A. County, in Riverside County, in Santa Clara County and in San Diego County. Haven't read up today's news yet but so far have found trouble reports in L.A. and in Santa Clara.

[killbotfactory]

3. Over 700,000 votes could have been tossed out?!

Holy shit.

[EFerrari]

4. That's only in Los Angeles County!

So, statewide, who knows how many.

[MonkeyFunk]

8. No

it doesn't say that.

[EFerrari]

11. Technically, you're right. Those votes weren't physically thrown away

after they were cast.

[MonkeyFunk]

12. I read it as

them totalling ALL the potential "decline to state" votes and assuming none of them were cast. That's not realistic.

[EFerrari]

16. Right. But all of those votes were put at risk.

No numerical claim really can be made because we don't know what happened. But I think it is a significant number simply because so many people are self identified Indys this year.

[ellisonz]

5. This needs to be looked into.

[Nailzberg]

7. The double bubble almost got me.

Was my first election in CA. I wouldn't have known to mark the Democrat bubble if a volunteer didn't specifically point it out to me.

[flpoljunkie]

9. There was no need for the "double bubble." If these votes are tossed out, it's disenfranchisement,

either by design or incompetence. Disallowing these ballots because a bubble saying "democrat" was not filled in by someone who is an Independent is outrageous and ought not to stand!

[ellisonz]

10. This should be going to court.

I hope they didn't destroy the disallowed ballots. I would also like to know how many we're talking about.

[Nailzberg]

13. I'm not even independent. I just don't believe my party preference is anyone's business.

Illinois has open primaries, so I've never stated a party affiliation before. When I registered in CA, I checked "decline to state".

That whole bubble thing bugged me. I thought about it all day. I went to vote in the middle of the day (Thanks Writers Guild!) so it was pretty empty. I imagine at peak voting times people weren't getting the same level of instruction.

[EFerrari]

18. There are other ways the vote could be "lost", too.

The voter was turned away improperly, the voter got wrong or misunderstood directions, the voter gave up and went home because no ballot was available, and so on.

[Barack_America]

14. This definitely needs to be looked at.

It would be shame for these people to turn out to vote for nothing.

Why can't we just come up with a simple, uniform way to vote?

[EFerrari]

22. Before our current, Dem Sec of State was voted in,

the Thug that Arnold appointed was steering us into awful, unverifiable black box voting. So, Bowen has had a bunch of digging out to do since she took office. But she's smart as anything and has been fighting to get our systems cleaned up even when the Republicans started attacking her in the (equally Republican) press.

[trashcanistanista]

15. I don't think that these votes should be thrown out and I

can't imagine they would be. I worked the election in Placer County and I attribute most of the confusion to voter ignorance but I can report in my precinct we were very vocal in explaining the choices for the DTS voters and getting them to mark their bubble when they signed the roll as we were trained to do. DTS voters overwhelmingly chose Dem ballots. There were a few (2) who chose DTS ballots and I explained to them that they would only be allowed to vote for the propositions and showed them the ballots so they could see what I meant to be absolutely sure that was what they wanted to do. I strongly suspect that the running out of Dem ballots in some precincts is linked to the DTS voters picking Dem ballots which refutes the story that they were not allowed to pick their ballot. Elections supplies us with the ballot type based on the amount of voters registered by party. I am in a roughly 2-1 rethug precinct and I got 2 times as many rethug ballots. I noticed we were using up slightly more Dem ballots throughout the day and was afraid I was going to run out. I reported it to the rover and he confirmed that all of his precincts were reporting the same thing and began to look into how to get us more Dem ballots. By 8:00 pm we had only about 20 Dem ballots left, we made it but our turnout was slightly more Dems than rethug in a strong red district. I can understand why some areas such as Palo Alto, Alameda, ran out of ballots where the Dem turnout was unprecedented. The state was unprepared in that respect.

A few other things to note - Obama won by something like 74 to 49(CLinton) in my precinct largly white, affluent and republican. There were several write ins for Clinton by republicans (don't count) McCain by Dems (don't count) and Paul by Libertarians (Don't count). Many voters hadn't voted in years, weren't familiar with the process, and demanded to vote when they weren't registered (got provisional). There were also a lot of voters coming in to demand provisional ballots who were vote by mail and didn't bring their absentee ballot to turn in. Last minute decisons and/or ignorance of the process? I will say thoug, that the statewastotally unpreparedforthe turnout and I think votes will be checked and counted for the next few days. Those were my experiences, and I can't speak for the whole state.

[EFerrari]

17. I imagine there was confusion all over the state.

Voter registration is up all over the country and I've been reading about worried election boards for weeks (when I put up the Election Reform Daily thread on Sundays) who have been fretting about how to manage the volume they're getting.

[trashcanistanista]

19. Well I personally NEVER

thought in a million years that I would ever face the problem of running out of Dem ballots in Placer County, and I am an experienced election worker and an experienced Democrat who lives up here!!:D Made. My. Day!!!

Let's hope they do better next time. I still trust Debra Bowen. Let's wait for this primary "thing" to shake out.

[EFerrari]

20. We're are SO lucky to have Debra right now.

We're in the best possible hands. And, I hope that most of the problems we'll be facing in November surface NOW so they can be fixed or at least, predicted.

[trashcanistanista]

25. Absolutely! Bowen has made changes for the better.

I forgot to mention when we turned in our stuff - ballots, machines, etc., we were met with spotlights and cops with guns out. Very tight security. I felt like I was in Argentina! Everything was checked at drop off and signed off. I made the mistake of getting out of my car and the cop yelled stay in your vehical! I had to explain I have a 2 door civic and I had something in the back seat that didn't fit in the trunk to drop off! Luckily it was lit up enough for them to see I had a two door and I was not arrested or shot for getting out of my car!

[EFerrari]

28. Omg!

:wow:

Where were you turning the stuff in? Cops with GUNS out? :wtf:

[trashcanistanista]

29. At the Seventh Day Adventist Church in Meadow Vista

that was the drop off point. Rifles were out and in their arms. It may have been for effect but I liked what I saw when I pulled up to the truck to empty my car. We were a little shaken to say the least.

[tandot]

23. Hi. We live in Placer County and it is great to hear that there was a high Dem turnout

We are registered Democrats and mailed our ballot last week. So, we don't expect problems with that.

Lets just hope Charlie Brown will kick butt to get Doolittle's seat. Wouldn't it be great to turn this red district blue?

[EFerrari]

26. Good to hear. Placer Co. is a beautiful place!

If we can keep these elections on track, I bet we'll see a number of places going big, beautiful and blue. :hi:

[trashcanistanista]

27. Last night, I can report that at least in Meadow Vista,

parts of Colfax and Applegate, it was blue!:-)

[tandot]

30. GREAT!

:woohoo: :woohoo:

[musiclawyer]

31. amny precincts in claveras county ran out of dem ballots

I know. I was at headquarters. The DTSs mostly went Obama. The Sierra foothills will be blue in November.