California Election Protection Network - A non-partisan network of groups and individuals across California coming together to achieve our mutual election integrity goals.

It's in the Golden State Too - Big City Vote Counting Problems

March 14, 2008 — Mike ()

Big city vote counting problems are a national disgrace. The Obama lost ballots may represent the tip of the iceberg in NYC but there’s no follow up. Even Mayor Mike Bloomberg called the zero-vote election districts for Obama “election fraud.”

The 2000 presidential election was heavily influenced by the Miami-Dade results. One major problem was that nobody had bothered to clean the punch card machines in years in this major urban area. The net result was confusion in the recount and lost votes for Gore.

Cuyahoga County - Cleveland was a heavy center of support for John Kerry in 2004 but the ballot keepers there lost, found, lost, and found again the 2004 ballots they were to store, questioning the validity of those ballots as proof of anything in post election investigations.

Then there’s “good government” Los Angeles. In 2003, there were warnings that Los Angeles and other large counties using punch cards would have problems with under votes (ballots without votes on key offices/issues). Nobody paid attention. But in the recall election aftermath, we found out that there were 9% more ballots cast in the recall than there were recall votes in Los Angeles. 9% of LA voters left the choice for recalling the governor blank. Isn’t the only reason people vote in a recall election is for the recall proposition?

In 2008, problems emerged again in Los Angeles where the county was unable to count tens of thousands of votes for independents. An elections board official said that problem, identified in 2002, went unsolved until activists pointed in out just weeks ago. It’s a good thing they did because the county elections folks had six years to correct and didn’t bother to either fix the problem or let the public know.

It’s as thought citizens are a nuisance to the election process in our largest cities, an inconvenient fact of life that makes the jobs of the boards of elections more difficult than they’d be if only a few of us voted. Now they have to deal with a general population that is far ahead of even some activists when it comes to challenging voting, voting equipment, and the honesty of our elections.

Filed under: CALIFORNIA, BALLOTS, ABUSE OF POWER | Comments (0)

KARL ROVE TACTICS IN LOS ANGELES?

February 6, 2008 — Einsteinia ()

by Sheri Myers
Today, Super Tuesday, a disturbing number of Los Angeles voters were denied a proper ballot. Why? Because some time in the recent past, they received what appeared to be a piece of junk mail and they threw it away. Oops. It was a notification for them to re-register. Why did they receive it? Who knows. But today, they had to vote on a provisional ballot. That ballot will most likely not be counted. Certainly it will not be included in the first count, the count that gets released to the public and the media - the count that decides the winner.

That’s called caging. It’s a Karl Rove tactic that succeeded in Ohio in 2004, and succeeded in Florida in 2000. Karl had a direct mail business in Texas, you see. He not only knows how to do this, he will do it. I personally do not believe that Karl resigned his position in the Bush Administration to spend time cuddled in the hammock with the wife. He’s out there, consulting and conniving and coming up with new ways to steal 2008.

Here’s another triumph for Karl. Today I’m manning the phones for the LA Election Protection Task Force, getting calls f romPoll Monitors who are observing huge mistakes made by poll workers - a lot of high school kids and elderly - overwhelmed and confused by the many duties of the job. Some poll workers are unhelpful and don’t care to do what’s correct and legal. None of them, even the most capable, and good hearted, can compensate for inadequate training f rom the County. For example:

You might have heard this report on local LA radio. Non-partisan voters are supposed to tick off a little “dem box” at the top of their ballot, if they want to vote for a Democratic candidate. Otherwise, their vote is not counted. Were these voters alerted to this by the poll workers? Not really. Was this pointed out in their “official” pollworker training? Not really. We hear roars of outrage and frustration and tears as voters (and the Obama campaign) realize their votes are for nothing.

Just one more, although I could go on and on. Many precincts were shifted around L.A. County. My precinct was split; half to another garage three streets away, half to the church up the hill. Were George and Heidi, my original polling place hosts, told where to direct the displaced voters? No. All over this county, voters wandered into the wrong polling place, and had to vote provisionally. (That’s IF they could find the wrong polling place. Signage was often terrible.)

Hey y’all, does this have a sickeningly familiar ring to it? How about “disenfranchisement in heavily Democratic precincts” as in, “Los Angeles Democrats make up 40% of the California Democratic party vote.”

“Oh my God,!” I wailed after 2004, after going to Ohio and experiencing the ruins of a stolen election. “How can they DO this to people?” I was on the phone with my sister, whose husband has been an exec for GE and Tyco. Her response had a “Well, duh!” ring to it.

“Because they want to WIN. ” Oh. Ah.

So. I wonder.

Do WE? Are WE willing to give two days out of 365 this year to work the vote - at the polls or monitoring the vote? By two days, I mean, sign up and work in June, get the experience, get ready for November. Two days to WIN.

Will YOU give a shift?

Today’s planned chaos indicates that if we truly want to win in November, we are going to have to split our time between working for our dream candidate and working to protect the vote. Ain’t no two ways around that, folks.

A sign over our kitchen sink when I was growing up in Ohio:

“If YOU don’t do it, it WON’T get done.”

Come on. Get involved. Unless you WANT Karl Rove to win. (Again.)

Onward to a true democracy!

Sheri Myers, Work the Vote LA

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email: workthevote@gmail.com

Filed under: Uncategorized, CALIFORNIA, CRIME REPORTS, ABUSE OF POWER, CALIFORNIA ELECTION PROTECTION NETWORK, LOS ANGELES | Comments (0)

Los Angeles' "Butterfly Ballot:" Full Report by dday

February 5, 2008 — Einsteinia ()

No tin foil, just thousands and thousands of unrecorded votes in LA County

by dday
Tue Feb 05, 2008 at 01:40:50 PM PST

So I went to my polling place at an off-hour to see if turnout was decent (it was pretty average, in my view). It was a new location for me, in a little art gallery featuring an exhibit called “Patriot Acts” (yes, a politically themed art installation in a polling place. Ah, the People’s Republic of Santa Monica). I had no problem getting my ballot and heading to the booth. The guy behind me was a DTS (decline to state) voter who had no idea that Republicans didn’t allow them to vote in the primary. “I wouldn’t vote for the Republicans anyway,” he yelled as he took a Democratic ballot. But nobody told him to make sure to fill out that Democratic oval to re-assert that he, as a nonpartisan voter, requested a Democratic ballot (as if taking the ballot in the first place wasn’t enough of a clue). So I told him.

See, you have to fill in this obscure bubble on your ballot to have your vote count as a DTS voter in Los Angeles County. Otherwise, it won’t, and since the ballot reader you personally witness doesn’t record undervotes, you’ll never know the difference.

UPDATE: To be clear, this problem is limited to Los Angeles County. Also, some are saying that people should just read the directions. That’s absurd. They’ve already asserted their intent by asking for the ballot, they shouldn’t have to do it twice. People don’t always follow directions so well; it’s a fact of life.

My neighbor was headed to the polls; she’s also a DTS voter. I told her to make sure to fill out that Democratic oval. She said she kind of heard something about that but wasn’t sure.

I’ve received more than a couple emails f rom DTS voters thanking me for telling them about the issue, or saying that they didn’t fill out the bubble, asking me whether or not their votes will be counted.

This is a NIGHTMARE. An absolute nightmare. This has been in place since 2002, and somehow the evidence f rom 2004, when so few DTS voters participated in the Democratic primary in LA County, wasn’t enough to dummy-proof the system. Thousands upon thousands of voters are going to be disenfranchised today. I can’t reach them all; neither can the CDP. The Secretary of State must demand that all those DTS ballots are impounded, the machines recalibrated to eliminate this problem, and all votes reread through the feeder. In a race so close, we cannot have this crisis of confidence.

Here’s the ballot, by the way:

I just got off a conference call with the Obama campaign right now and they talked about this very issue. “There is great concern” in Los Angeles County, and “the pollworkers are confused” about this as well, according to the lawyer on the phone now (I would use the word “ignorant” and not confused). “We’re hoping the Secretary of State and the County Registrar will rectify this situation” but they don’t sound particularly hopeful.

DTS voters are also being denied ballots in selected counties, according to the campaign.

Carla Marinucci is wondering why this wasn’t challenged previously. This has been in place in LA County in multiple election cycles, and knowing that DTS voters would show up in record numbers, I agree that it should have been caught earlier. My point is that the Secretary of State’s office or the county registrar should have been the ones to catch it. The lawyer just said “We hope that they will adopt procedures to make sure these ballots are counted,” and if they aren’t adopted, he raised the option of legal challenges.

These ballots almost certainly won’t be counted tonight, and keep that in mind when you start seeing the results roll in.

The campaigns are hoping that the media gets this out. I’m trying.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: I’m going to try and clarify this a bit. LA County has an “inka-vote” system. You get a scan tron sheet and then line it up at the voting booth, and then fill out the ballot that you see above. At the end of the process, you have a scan-tron sheet with a bunch of dots filled out on it. So that gets fed into the feeder in front of you, and if it’s OK it’ll say “ballot successful”.

DTS voters and Democratic voters have the same “ballot” but DIFFERENT TYPE SCAN-TRON SHEETS. For a DTS voter who didn’t fill out that bubble, they won’t find out at that time because the ballot feeder doesn’t count the undervote.

This was figured out by a law student who referred it to the Courage Campaign over the weekend, nobody on any campaign or the elections officials caught it.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE TO THE UPDATE: I just got off the phone with our pal thereisnospoon, an Obama precinct captain. He informs me that all Obama precinct captains in LA County are aware of this, and they are fanning out to poll sites to educate pollworkers about this problem.

If anyone knows about anything the Clinton campaign is doing, please email me or leave a comment and I’ll update. I think this was referring to a different issue (there were other glitches reported in LA County today), but it’s not encouraging:

f rom the inbox: This is really weird. f rom the Clinton campaign:

4:25 PM EST HILLARY WIRE UPDATEâ€¦
* False reports about voting problems in LA are being drudged up
â€“ Everything is going smoothly in LA.

I hope they wake up to what’s happening.

UPDATE ETC: I get emails, f rom the CA field director for Obama, Buffy Wicks:

Californians have reported problems voting as “Decline to State” voters, commonly referred to as “unaffiliated,” “independent” or “non-partisan” voters.

Please read this email for clarification of how “Decline to State” (DTS) voters can vote in today’s election for Barack Obama. Even if you’ve already voted, please make sure this information gets to as many voters as possible.

DTS voters have the right to vote for Barack Obama in the Democratic Presidential Primary.

DTS voters must identify themselves as DTS or non-partisan voters and ask to vote in the Democratic Presidential Primary when they arrive at their polling location. They will get instructions f rom a poll worker on how to vote in the Democratic Primary. If a voter gets into the voting booth and finds that he or she does not have an option to vote for Barack Obama, the voter should not cast his or her ballot. Instead, he or she should return the partially filled-out or unmarked ballot to the poll worker, and ask the poll worker to seek clarification f rom the supervisor at the polling location or f rom the County Registrar of Voters.

In Los Angeles County, DTS voters will be given a non-partisan ballot which they must take into a “Democratic” booth. They must mark both the “Democratic” bubble and the bubble for Barack Obama.

If you or anyone you know has any problems voting today, please contact the local County Registrar of Voters or one of our election protection hotlines at:

Los Angeles:
310-801-9546
310-779-0816

San Francisco/Bay Area:
415-606-6043

Oakland/East Bay Area:
510-520-5025

San Diego:
619-770-7105

Or email electionprotection@obamaca.com

Thank you for your support.

Filed under: Uncategorized, CALIFORNIA, BALLOTS, CALIFORNIA ELECTION PROTECTION NETWORK | Comments (0)