Kim Alexander's Weblog

CVF-News Round-up: CA voter registration form, "software independence", JFK award and more

2008-05-08T13:50:00.000-07:00

Yesterday the California Voter Foundation issued this CVF-News Round-up covering the following topics:

• California's voter registration form gets redesigned

• CVF encourages EAC to require "software independence" in voting standards

• 23 of 58 counties' post-election manual tally reports are now online

• California Secretary of State Debra Bowen to receive Profile in Courage award

• Redistricting initiative submitted for qualification

Follow the link above for more details and links.

New California Online Voter Guide for June 3 Primary debuts!

2008-05-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

With another statewide election just around the corner, the California Voter Foundation today released its new California Online Voter Guide, providing nonpartisan information on state candidates and measures.

Since 1994, CVF has produced the online guides to help Californians prepare to cast an informed ballot. The guide is now in its sixteenth edition.

This year, California’s primary election was split, resulting in three statewide elections in 2008. The Presidential primary was held in February. On June 3rd, legislative and congressional primaries will determine which candidates face off in the November General election.

The races are highly competitive in a number of districts, with contested primaries in 21 of the state’s 53 congressional districts, 8 of the 20 State Senate districts, and 28 of the 80 Assembly districts.

In addition, California voters will vote on just two statewide propositions this election. However, they are competing measures that address a complicated subject -- eminent domain. To help voters sort it all out, the new online guide provides lists of the top five donors for and against each measure, news articles and links to campaign web sites.

Another factor complicating this election is that the participation rules for nonpartisan, “Decline to State” voters have changed yet again. In the June 3rd election, The Democratic, Republican and American Independent parties will permit nonpartisan voters to participate in their primary elections.

Other resources available in CVF’s guide include a “Voting FAQ”, county-by-county directories of election offices and voting equipment, tips on how to host election house parties, and maps of political districts. The guide also highlights important dates and deadlines, such as the last day to register in order to vote on June 3 (May 19), and the first day voters can request a Vote by Mail ballot (May 5).

CVF’s California Online Voter Guide will be updated throughout the election season. The California Voter Foundation is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization advancing the responsible use of technology to improve the democratic process. CVF’s 2008 voter education programs are supported by the Wallace Alexander Gerbode Foundation.

Berkeley -- A City of Firsts

2008-04-30T08:41:00.001-07:00

A lot of the work I do with the California Voter Foundation is focused on how California can set a good example for the nation and world when it comes to responsible use of technology in the democratic process.

There's good reason to think California will have an impact -- it traditionally does. Whether it's property tax revolts, term limits, electric cars, recycling, smoking bans, electronic filing of campaign finance disclosure reports, paper trails for electronic voting....well, you get the idea. The influence is so persistent that in DC there is at times a bias against anything California.

Like it or not, California is no doubt a trendsetter in numerous ways, and within the state, the city of Berkeley is the place where trends begin. Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle featured this story by Carolyn Jones about Berkeley's long history of "firsts". A few excerpts are below.

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Sometimes Berserkeley isn't so berserk after all.

Many ideas spawned in Berkeley - and roundly mocked by the rest of the country - have taken root and have been adopted by cities everywhere. Among them: police radios, a ban on Styrofoam, health benefits for domestic partners and a switch to biodiesel for city cars.

These and other Berkeley firsts are part of a painstakingly researched show at the Berkeley History Center that chronicles the city's long history of civic innovation. "Berkeley, a City of Firsts" covers dozens of ideas that started there, including some that flopped and a few that Berkeley claims credit for but really happened elsewhere.

"There's no small city in the U.S. more known in the nation and world - for better or worse - than Berkeley," said Charles Wollenberg, chair of the history department at Berkeley City College and author of "Berkeley: A City in History" (UC Press, 2008). "For a city of 100,000, it has a huge influence."

Berkeley's creative approach to government goes back to the city's early days, when the University of California moved there from Oakland in the 1870s. The mix of academic intellectuals and Bohemian castoffs from San Francisco's Gold Rush era made for a very independent, quirky population, Wollenberg said.

Besides the innovations from City Hall, Berkeley has been the birthplace of less tangible ideas, such as the Free Speech Movement, the disability rights movement and California cuisine.

Getting ready for the June Primary

2008-04-16T14:21:00.000-07:00

The next statewide election is less than two months away! The California Voter Foundation is busy working on a new edition of our California Online Voter Guide which will debut soon. In the meantime, the official Certified List of Candidates and Statewide Voter Information Guide are available from the Secretary of State.

LA Times/Onion on Diebold (April Fools!)

2008-04-01T16:49:00.000-07:00

Today's Los Angeles Times online features this excellent blog entry by Andrew Malcolm "reporting" on a Diebold software glitch. The glitch was first "reported" by the Onion News Network (ONN)in this online news video. Andrew Malcolm's story adds some interesting twists to the original Onion report. Excerpts are below. Happy April Fools day!

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An apparent simultaneous software glitch in thousands of Diebold electronic voting machines across the country during the night accidentally released word that Arizona Arizona Republican Senator John McCain will officially win the general election on Nov. 4.

Release of the preset presidential election results months prematurely could become a serious embarrassment to the company whose expensive and allegedly unreliable electronic voting machines have been so controversial in some places.

"We really don't know how this happened," a company spokesman told The Ticket, "but we stress that all the congressional election outcomes are still sealed. So there's still some mystery. And we're asking the news media to suppress the presidential news results in order to maintain the national political suspense for another seven months." Obviously, the appeal for secrecy worked on other websites but not on The Ticket.

The computer error is certain to affect negatively the television....

audience ratings on election night, since viewers will have known the winner for exactly 31 weeks. So election night's mounting popular vote counts, the states changing colors, electoral college totals and pleasant people with perfect hairdos predicting state outcomes and discussing what it all means will look like the sham it is, except this time viewers will know it.

CA Post-election tally reports now online at SoS site

2008-04-01T14:23:00.000-07:00

Today California Secretary of State Debra Bowen began publishing post-election tally reports from counties on the results of their one percent manual counts which are conducted to audit the accuracy of computer vote counts.

California's manual count law is more than four decades old. Basically, a set of ballots are selected at random and hand-counted, in public. The hand-counted results are then compared to the computer-counted results.

What happens if they don't match? That's been a nagging question for a number of years. Fortunately, when Secretary Bowen was a member of the legislature, she authored a bill to require counties to report the results of their manual counts. So far 12 of the state's 58 counties have done so.

California is one of just two states that I know of (the other being Minnesota) that require reporting of post-election audit results. What these audits show is that vote counting is rarely perfect, but that there is also usually a reasonable explanation of why the results may be off by a few votes. You can view those explanations in the reports.

While California law requires counties to report their manual count results to the Secretary of State, it does not require the Secretary of State to publish these reports online. Kudos to Secretary of State Debra Bowen for doing so. We need this kind of transparency in elections to give the public confidence that election results are accurate.

A record nine million Californians participated in Presidential primary

2008-03-25T10:01:00.000-07:00

The certified results for the February 5, 2008 Presidential primary were released recently by the Secretary of State. They show a record 9 million Californians voted in the election, more than in any previous primary election in California's history.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen issued this news release on March 15 announcing the certified Statement of Vote.

Some interesting findings from the results: 58 percent of California's registered and 40 percent of California's eligible voters participated in the election. 42 percent of the ballots were returned through the mail; 58 percent voted at the polls. (Vote-by-mail rates have remained at the same level for the past several elections, despite predictions by some that they will continue to rise). Sonoma County had the highest voter participation rate, with 76.4 percent of the county's registered voters casting ballots, followed by Marin at 75.7 percent. Merced County had the lowest participation rate, at 46 percent of registered voters, with Kings county coming in the second lowest, at 47 percent.

CA SoS Debra Bowen wins JFK Profile in Courage award

2008-03-19T17:06:00.000-07:00

California's Secretary of State, Debra Bowen has won this year's John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award! Kudos to Secretary Bowen, who has indeed shown enormous political courage and leadership in her efforts to improve voting equipment security in California.

This Associated Press story provides additional details. Excerpts are below.

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BOSTON (AP) — The secretaries of state in California and Ohio were named winners of the John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award on Tuesday for challenging the reliability of electronic voting systems.

Debra Bowen severely restricted the use of electronic voting systems in California six months before the Feb. 5 presidential primary, after computer scientists at the University of California concluded they could be hacked.

Many county registrars were furious with her decision, which they said left them little time to get ready for the early primary.
The switch overwhelmed election workers in some of the state's most populous counties, stretching the election night count into the next morning.

Bowen said the award vindicated the work of many who had preceded her in questioning the reliability of electronic voting systems, "in many cases having been told they were off base or crazy."

Ohio Secretary of State Jennifer Brunner required counties using electronic voting systems to give paper ballots to voters who requested them in the primary election held this month.

She also ordered county officials to replace their electronic voting systems with paper ballots and optical scan technology by the November general election.

The awards will be presented May 12 at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston by Caroline Kennedy and her uncle, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

The Profile in Courage Award is presented annually to public servants who have made decisions of conscience without regard for personal or professional consequences.

Pennsylvania Yanks Voter Site After Data Leak

2008-03-19T15:27:00.000-07:00

The Washington Post published this story today by IDG News Service reporter Robert McMillan that describes a Pennsylvania state web site where 30,000 voter registration records, including birthdate and drivers' license numbers could be accessed online. My comments are included in the article featured below.

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With voting in Pennsylvania's presidential primary just a month away, the state was forced to pull the plug on a voter registration Web site Tuesday after it was found to be exposing sensitive data about voters in the state.

The problem lay in an online voter registration application form that was designed to simplify the task of registering to vote. State residents used it to enter their information on the Web site, which then generated a printable form that could be mailed to state election officials. Pennsylvania's Department of State disabled the registration form late Tuesday after being informed of the vulnerability by IDG News Service.

Because of a Web programming error, the Web site was allowing anyone on the Internet to view the forms, which contained data such as the voter's name, date of birth, driver's license number and political party affiliation. On some forms, the last four digits of social security numbers could also be seen.

"Upon learning of this situation, the Department of State acted immediately to disable the specific page," said Department of State Spokeswoman Leslie Amoros in an e-mail message.

"The Department is reviewing the facts to determine how this information became available," she said. "We are also taking all necessary steps to correct the situation and are implementing processes aimed to prevent future occurrences."

The flaw was first reported by a reader of Digg.com, who stumbled upon the bug after filling out a voter registration form.

"Being a security conscious programmer, I decided to test," wrote the reader, identified only as mtg169, "Very bad PA...very very bad!"

The bug did not expose all registration data, just the information supplied by those who used the Web site's online form. About 30,000 voter registration records appeared to be available on the site.

"That's bad, really bad," said Jeremiah Grossman, chief technology officer with Web security vendor WhiteHat Security. In an e-mail, he said he hadn't seen this type of error on a voter registration Web site before, but that it was caused by a common Web programming error. "We've seen a great many vulnerabilities like this in the course of doing our work."

Many counties offer online accessto voter registration data, so that residents can check on their status, but these databases typically remove data that could be misused, such as date of birth, social security numbers and driver's license numbers.

The last four digits of a social security number are often used as a security question, required to access certain types of billing accounts, and a skilled identity thief could use a driver's license number, name and address in a check forging scheme, according to privacy experts.

"There are so many alarming things about this," said Kim Alexander, president of California Voter Foundation, which has studied voter privacy across the U.S. "It just seems to be a case where you have government agencies using sophisticated technology in thoughtless ways."

With an important presidential primary set to occur in Pennsylvania on April 22, it's particularly worrisome that this data could have been accessed by anyone, she added. "All kinds of dirty tricks could be played," she said. "In heated campaigns we've seen cases where someone will call a whole bunch of voters and tell them that the election date has been changed."

While states may make these databases available for political purposes, their use is strictly controlled and sensitive information like driver's license numbers is removed. With the data on the Web, this is no longer possible, Alexander said. "You lose all those protections when you have this data available on the Internet."

"It's unprecedented that this information would be so freely available on the Internet," she added.

Ironically, with many voters already avoiding voter registration because of privacy concerns, Pennsylvania's efforts to help voters may end up backfiring, said Beth Givens, director of the Privacy Rights Clearinghouse "When word gets out, it will be one of those things that will deter people from registering to vote," she said.

Review, video and audio of Joint Legislative "double bubble" hearing

2008-03-17T13:35:00.000-07:00

On Friday, March 7 I went to Los Angeles for the joint legislative hearing examining voting problems in the February 5 primary election, particularly the "double bubble" fiasco which resulted in 12,000 Angelenos' votes for president not being included in the certified election results.

The hearing was well-attended by legislators and election integrity activists alike. Lawmakers there (all Democrats) included Senators Jenny Oropeza, Ron Calderon, Mark Ridley-Thomas and Dean Florez and Assemblymember Curren Price. Florez said he was "shocked" that local registrars of voters have the power to decide whether to count votes in question, and suggested the law could be changed to give the Secretary of State authority to count votes in dispute at the county level.

Oropeza engaged in some tough questioning of Conny McCormack, and criticized the former L.A. county registrar for not seeking additional staff support from LA County supervisors when she was unable to meet the demands of the office. McCormack had testified that she had been unable to address the double-bubble problem prior to the election because the elections office was "consumed" by the Secretary of State's review of the county's InkaVote voting system. Oropeza stated that she thought there was a cultural, psychological problem within the elections department that prevented the former registrar from seeking out help when it was needed.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen testified that currently there is no form of instant communication available to get a message out to the precincts. Such a system would have been useful when reports started coming in early on Election Day from throughout the state that pollworkers were not giving decline-to-state voters partisan ballots to cast, as they were entitled to do.

The California State Senate has made this audio recording of the hearing available. Video recordings of testimony presented by several witnesses, including me, is available from the BradBlog web site. My written testimony is also available.

12,000 Uncounted vote results posted online; hearing coverage from the Daily Breeze

2008-03-08T06:21:00.000-08:00

The Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters has posted the vote counts for the 12,013 Primary decline-to-state ballots that could not be counted with 100 percent accuracy and so were not included in the certified results. This action helps bring greater transparency to the "double bubble" fiasco and I congratulate the county for doing it.

Today's Daily Breeze features this article by Gene Maddaus about yesterday's hearing. It is featured below.

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Los Angeles County elections officials came under fire Friday for voting problems that caused more than 12,000 presidential votes to go uncounted in the February primary.

At a hearing conducted by state legislators in Los Angeles, Sen. Jenny Oropeza, D-Redondo Beach, criticized former Registrar-Recorder Conny McCormack for not doing more to prevent the "double bubble" glitch that initially threatened to disenfranchise about 60,000 nonpartisan, or decline-to-state, voters.

McCormack, who retired in January, argued that her office was so consumed with the effort to recertify the InkaVote system as a whole that it did not review the nonpartisan ballot design. The ballot, which has been in place since 2002, required decline-to-state voters to mark an extra bubble to indicate whether they were voting for a Democrat or for an American Independent candidate.

McCormack argued that the ballots were designed to accommodate the complexity of California's primary system, in which parties can choose whether to allow unaffiliated voters to cast ballots in their elections.

"In hindsight, we can see 20/20," McCormack said. "We don't sit around thinking, `How many people can we disenfranchise today?' That's not what we do."

McCormack praised Acting Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan for taking steps to resolve the problem. But the audience - largely made up of election protection activists - greeted Logan with boos. Logan has been criticized for initially saying that it would be impossible to count any of the nonpartisan ballots in which voters had not filled in the second bubble.

Responding to a public outcry, Logan ultimately was able to count about 48,000 of those ballots. Sen. Hillary Clinton won those votes by a 51-42 percentage over Sen. Barack Obama, roughly equal to her victory margin statewide.

It was assumed that nonpartisan voters would more heavily favor Obama, and it was the Obama campaign that drew the most attention to the "double bubble" issue on election day. In response, the Clinton campaign accused the Obama campaign of cynicism and of trying to cast doubt on the outcome of the California primary.

The 48,000 nonpartisan ballots that were recently tabulated did not affect the allocation of delegates in the presidential primary.

Logan has said the "double bubble" design will not be used for the June 3 primary.

Election specialists have urged the county to dispense with the InkaVote system in favor of a system in which the candidates' names would appear on the actual ballots, as is done in every other county in the state. That would allow voters to be sure they had voted for the correct person.

Oropeza, who chairs the Senate Select Committee on Integrity of Elections, said she planned to draft legislation to improve poll worker training, ballot instructions and communication between the Secretary of State's Office and the county registrars.

She also criticized the culture of the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder's Office, saying it had shown a tendency to be "rigid in one's point of view, and to not listen when there's going to be a problem."

Oropeza said she would also urge other legislators from Los Angeles County to get together to advocate that the InkaVote system be scrapped.

Testimony from today's hearing in Los Angeles

2008-03-07T21:10:00.001-08:00

Here is the testimony I delivered today in Los Angeles at the Joint Legislative Hearing examining voting problems in the February 5 California Primary, particularly L.A. County's "double bubble" fiasco. I made the following three suggestions:

1) There needs to be a full accounting of all of the Decline-to-State ballots;

2) There needs to be a thorough, outside investigation; and

3) Los Angeles needs to move to a paper ballot voting system where the candidates and choices appear directly on the ballot.

12,000 presidential votes go uncounted in Los Angeles

2008-03-05T17:31:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, Los Angeles County certified its election results from the February 5, 2008 presidential primary. Under the additional counting methods suggested by the Secretary of State, the County Board of Supervisors and LA County Counsel, the registrar's office was able to count 80 percent of the "decline-to-state" voters' ballots that were cast in the presidential contest where voters failed to mark the party preference bubble. 12,013 votes could not be counted because their votes were in ballot positions shared by two candidates and voter intent could not be determined with 100 percent accuracy.

This article by Alison Hewitt in the Whittier Daily News provides additional details. Excerpts are below. On Friday, there will be a joint legislative hearing in Los Angeles to examine the "double bubble" fiasco and other voting problems in the Feb. 5 California primary. I will be testifying at the hearing; an agenda is available online. Unfortunately, there will be neither a video or audio live webcast available.

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County election officials announced Monday they tallied nearly 80 percent of the uncounted "double bubble" presidential ballots cast by nonpartisan voters in February's primary election.

Officials had estimated 50,000 uncounted ballots, but that total increased to 59,174 when a final count, including provisional ballots, was taken.

The count, completed Sunday, had no effect on the outcome of the primary.

Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Rodham Clinton received 51 percent of the 47,153 votes that were counted. Barack Obama gained 42 percent of those same ballots.

Just over 12,000 votes could not be interpreted, said Dean Logan, the acting registrar-recorder/county clerk.

"You never want a situation when votes cannot be counted," Logan said. "But given the situation and the extraordinary effort that went into interpreting voter intent, I'm very satisfied with being able to count 80 percent of these."

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Conversations with the Secretary of State's Office and county counsel helped Logan develop a plan to legally interpret and count most of the votes, precinct by precinct. Votes in bubbles 11-15, which were assigned to Democratic candidates, were all counted. Votes in bubbles 8-10, which were assigned to both parties, were counted only if voter roles showed all the nonpartisan voters from a precinct asked to crossover Democratic.

Joint Legislative Hearing March 7 in LA to review Primary election problems

2008-02-28T16:45:00.000-08:00

Next Friday, March 7, three legislative committees will hold a joint hearing in Los Angeles to review the problems faced by California voters at the 2008 Presidential Primary election, including the "double bubble" fiasco in Los Angeles.

The hearing is being organized by the State Senate Elections Committee, the Assembly Elections Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intregrity of Elections. The chairs of those committees (Senator Ron Calderon, Assemblyman Curren Price and Senator Jenny Oropeza) will be hearing from a number of witnesses, including former Los Angeles Registrar of Voters Conny McCormack, Acting Los Angeles Registrar of Voters Dean Logan, Secretary of State Debra Bowen, Contra Costa County's Registrar of Voters Steve Weir, representatives from the League of Women Voters and Common Cause, and me. There will also be an opportunity for public comment.

The hearing will take place from 1-4 p.m. in the Auditorium of the Ronald Reagan Building located at 300 South Spring Street in downtown Los Angeles. I'm hoping there will be a visual or audio live webcast and if one becomes available I'll link to it from my blog.

LA Supervisors ask for full accounting of double bubble trouble

2008-02-27T16:59:00.001-08:00

Yesterday at the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors' hearing, Acting Registrar of Voters Dean Logan presented the Board with his plan for counting the votes from decline-to-state voters on ballots that did not include the second mark indicating the party preference. Mr. Logan reported to the board of his plans to count the votes where voter intent could be accurately determined because either the candidate ballot position was not shared by more than one candidate, or the pollbook shows that all the Decline-to-state voters in the precinct voted with the same party.

As I pointed out in yesterday's blog post, this solution, while an improvement, falls short of what the Secretary of State requested, which is a full accounting of all of the decline-to-state ballots. Fortunately, Supervisors Zev Yaroslavsky and Yvonne Burke are on top of the situation.

At yesterday's hearing they insisted that Mr. Logan provide a full accounting of all of the votes that are going uncounted, according to this article by Alison Hewitt in today's Pasadena Star News. Here's the relevant excerpt:

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Supervisors Yvonne Burke and Yaroslavsky asked that Logan also tally the final number of votes that could not be counted, "so the public knows what the damage was," Yaroslavsky said. Burke requested that those figures be broken down by congressional district.

"(This) would mean that 175,000 out of the 200,000 independent voters who came to the polls will have been counted, and probably more," Yaroslavsky said. "I am glad that we're not using this system ever again."

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Kudos to Supervisors Burke and Yaroslavsky for pushing for a full accounting of this fiasco. Without it, there will be lingering questions and doubts, which will serve to feed conspiracy theories and foment distrust of the elections department. To be fully transparent and accountable the county would, and should also tally the votes that they cannot count with one hundred percent accuracy.

ALL of the votes can be counted, after all, but they may not be able to be included in the certified results because they can't be counted with one hundred percent accuracy. They can, however, be counted with about 98 percent accuracy. For example, let's say there are 18,000 votes that cannot be counted with one hundred percent accuracy. The registrar of voters could still count them and release results that say: "8,000 of these votes would have gone for either Barack Obama or Mad Max Riekse; 8,000 would have gone for either Hillary Clinton or Don Grundmann; and 2,000 would have gone for John Edwards or Diane Beall Templin". Then the public can review those results and come to their own conclusions about whether they would have had an impact on the delegate count or not. The other advantage of doing this is that all the voters who participated would see their votes show up someplace -- maybe not in the certified results, but at least show up in some on-the-record way.

LA Registrar informs Board, SoS of his vote-counting plans

2008-02-26T13:53:00.000-08:00

Yesterday Los Angeles County's Acting Registrar of Voters Dean Logan sent this letter to Secretary of State Debra Bowen informing her of his plans to comply with requests by Bowen as well as the county's Board of Supervisors to count as many of the "double bubble" votes as can be accurately counted. Mr. Logan has also sought and received legal analysis from the Los Angeles County Counsel's office.

This is a big improvement over where the situation was two weeks ago, when Mr. Logan informed the Board of Supervisors that he would not count the votes on ballots where "Decline to state" (DTS) voters marked the presidential candidate choice but failed to mark the party choice on the ballot. Initially he said these votes could not be accurately counted because some American Independent Party candidates' ballot positions overlap with Democratic Party candidates' positions. Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky pointed that for many of the ballots there is a choice made outside of the overlap so the voter's intent can be accurately determined.

In her letter to Mr. Logan, Secretary of State Debra Bowen requested the pollbooks that pollworkers mark to indicate DTS voters' crossover preferences can also be consulted to accurately count some of the votes in question. For example, if the pollbook in a precinct shows that all the DTS voters in that precinct requested a Democratic ballot, the votes from that precinct can be counted toward the Democratic candidates.

Although Mr. Logan states in his letter that he believes the criteria he will use to count the votes in question meet the objectives outlined in the Secretary of State's letter, his plan, at least as it is outlined in his letter to Secretary Bowen, falls short of one of her requests. The Secretary of State also requested that the registrar determine the number of ballots, on a precinct-by-precinct basis, where voters correctly filled in both bubbles, only filled in the presidential candidate bubble, or filled in neither bubbles.

Mr. Logan's decision to count as many votes as he possibly can is a step in the right direction; however, the public is entited to a full accounting of the scope of this fiasco, and deserves to know how many votes will not be counted.

Congratulations to Rick Jacobs and the folks at the Courage Campaign for all of their hard work on this issue -- their grassroots organizing efforts have been incredibly successful and effective.

"Double Bubble" Forum archive, SoS letter to LA, and new LA Times story

2008-02-19T16:34:00.000-08:00

An archive of the Forum show on KQED last Friday covering the "Double Bubble" fiasco in Los Angeles is available online. Last Thursday, Secretary of State Debra Bowen sent this letter to LA Registrar Dean Logan requesting that he use the pollbook sign-in information to count the decline-to-state votes to the best of his ability. Yesterday's Los Angeles Times featured this story by Richard Paddock which further investigates the situation. Excerpts are below.

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Six years ago, Los Angeles County began using a ballot for nonpartisan voters that had a little-noticed design flaw. Confusion over how to mark the ballot, critics say, caused tens of thousands of votes to go uncounted in three elections between 2002 and 2006.

At the time, election officials knew that some votes were not being counted but saw no need to make changes. After all, the missing votes went unnoticed in the three primary elections and no one complained.

That all changed with the Feb. 5 presidential primary.

Just before election day, a grass-roots advocacy group called the Courage Campaign realized that the ballot was defective because it required nonpartisans wanting to vote in a party primary to mark an extra bubble designating which party they were choosing.

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Election officials say that a primary is the most complex kind of election. The number of political parties -- six on Feb. 5 -- means a multiplicity of ballots. Crossover voting that allows nonpartisans to vote in certain party primaries can make organizing the vote even more complicated.

"Election officials will tell you they despise these elections," said former L.A. County Registrar Conny McCormack, who retired in January, a month before the vote. "Voters don't understand them, and poll workers don't understand them."

There are other peculiarities about L.A. County's election system that set it apart.

It is the only county in California to use the InkaVote Plus system, in which voters darken bubbles on their ballot with a special InkaVote pen.

The names of the candidates are listed in the "vote recorder" book in the polling booth but are not printed on the ballot itself. The ballot contains only numbers representing the candidates and the bubbles where voters mark their choices.

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At first, election officials blamed voters for not reading the instructions carefully.

Paul Drugan, Logan's executive assistant, said election officials had foreseen the problem months earlier and had been educating voters about the requirement. He dismissed the concerns of anxious voters who were worried that their ballots would not count.

"Is it a perfect system?" he asked. "No, it is not. Elections are an imperfect beast."

Since then, the registrar's office has become more contrite.

Logan said the ballot design makes it difficult to determine voters' intent but that his office is investigating ways to count the disqualified votes.

LA vote counting issues on KQED's "Forum" this morning

2008-02-15T09:11:00.000-08:00

KQED's Forum program will feature a discussion this morning about the LA vote counting situation. I'll be on it along with California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, plus Steve Weir and Rick Hasen. It's broadcast in the San Francisco Bay Area at 88.5 FM and live online.

Here's the blurb from KQED's web site:

Forum, with guest host Scott Shafer

California Counts -- Almost one million votes from California's Super Tuesday primary remain to be counted. We look at how the state's vote counting system fared in the primary. Guests include Kim Alexander, president and founder of the California Voter Foundation, a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization promoting and applying the responsible use of technology to improve the democratic process; Steve Weir, president of the California Association of Clerks and Election Officials; Rick Hasen, William H. Hannon distinguished professor of law at Loyola Law School in Los Angeles; and Debra Bowen, California's secretary of state.

LA Times editorial on the "double bubble" trouble

2008-02-14T16:04:00.000-08:00

Yesterday's Los Angeles Times featured an excellent editorial about the county's "double bubble trouble", and concluded that the county needs a new ballot design. It is featured below.

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And to think we made fun of Florida.

As of today, we take back the jeers about hanging chads and the unkind comments about inept voters befuddled by butterfly ballots. Somehow it doesn't seem as funny when it happens at home -- voting irregularities in Los Angeles County will disqualify the ballots of thousands of people who went to the polls on Super Tuesday.

In 2000, Florida voters flubbed their choices for president because they were confronted with a ballot whose design was new to them. But that's not the case here. L.A. County officials have long used a ballot whose design was known to consistently disenfranchise unaffiliated voters. They simply did nothing about it.

Nonpartisan voters last week could cast ballots for Democratic or American Independent party candidates in the presidential primary, but to do so, they had to ink in an extra bubble choosing a party. Only registered Republicans could participate in that party's primary. Thousands of unaffiliated voters did not know about the bubble, and about half of the 189,000 ballots cast by "decline to state" voters countywide didn't have it marked. As a result, many of those votes won't count (at least in the presidential race; their votes for ballot measures were still valid).

Election officials are calling this a glitch, but the outcome was entirely foreseeable. In fact, it has happened before. In the March 2004 election, 44% of crossover ballots were unusable, and in June 2006, it was 42%. With numbers this high, the county registrar should have investigated this matter long before now.

This election season is the most exciting in decades. The race to determine whether the Democratic presidential nomination will go to the first woman or the first African American has drawn voters to polls and caucuses in record numbers, and voters in Los Angeles County were no exception.

Under any circumstances, it's troubling to see a vote go uncounted; it's especially so when history is being made.

The county has taken a sample of the decline-to-state ballots in 1% of local precincts, and it estimates that roughly 49,500 votes ultimately cannot be counted, so most likely they will never be included in the candidates' vote tallies. Could they have affected the outcome of Super Tuesday? Could they have changed the delegate count? Acting County Registrar Dean Logan says no; the margins of victory were too large. Maybe so, but this hasn't been a process designed to instill confidence within the electorate. The county needs to produce a new ballot design before the next election.

Decline-to-state voters' ballots in L.A. may get counted

2008-02-13T15:19:00.001-08:00

Yesterday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors questioned Acting Registrar of Voters Dean Logan about the report his office issued Monday, which concluded that an estimated 49,500 votes from decline-to-state voters would go uncounted. According to this story in the San Francisco Chronicle by Joe Garofoli, LA election officials will attempt to tally those ballots after all. According to the Chronicle, "Logan's next step after consulting with his staff and legal officials is creating a process to determine how many ballots to review and then figure whom those voters were supporting. His deadline is March 4, when the California vote must be certified."

The Daily Breeze also covered yesterday's meeting. That story is below. Transcripts of LA County Supervisors' meetings are available online within 24-48 hours of the meeting.

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At least some of the estimated 49,500 uncounted, nonpartisan ballots from the Feb. 5 primary election could be tallied after all, Acting Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan told county supervisors Tuesday.

In a report released Monday, Logan said it would be "impossible to determine with certainty for which candidate the voter intended to vote" but altered his view when questioned by the county board Tuesday afternoon.

Voters who had registered nonpartisan could request an American Independent or Democratic ballot but were told they also had to mark on the ballot which party they were voting for, and many forgot to make that additional mark.

The ballot bubbles for the American Independent and the Democratic guides overlapped on slots 8 through 10, meaning it would be unclear which candidate nonpartisan voters chose if they did not also indicate which party's primary they were voting in.

However, the Democratic ballot included eight choices and the American Independent only three, meaning they did not overlap for slots 11 through 15 - notably including the slots for Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama.

Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky pointed out that even if a ballot did not note which party the voter meant to select, if voters marked between slots 11 and 15, their choices were clear.

"Of those that don't fall into that Never-Never Land, why wouldn't we be able to identify at least those ... and count the ones that are countable? It may be a pain in the butt to do it, and it may be costly, but it seems to me that it's doable," Yaroslavsky said. "To say out of the box that we're not even going to try, that angers people. It angers me, and I'm not one of the aggrieved voters."

Initially, Logan said that the fact that the Republican Party's ballot guide included slots 8 through 18 and that a voter could have wandered into the wrong voting booth by accident would mean that there was still ambiguity, but his objection was rejected by Yaroslavsky.

"Hypothetically, it's possible, but it's not reasonable," he said.

The board directed Logan to see if there is a way to tally the uncounted votes before the results are certified.

LA County Registrar's report estimates 49,500 presidential votes will go uncounted

2008-02-13T14:29:00.001-08:00

Last week, millions of Californians participated in the Presidential primary election. Excitement was extremely high, for this was the first time in a generation that California voters would have a say in selecting the political parties' nominees for president.

Nearly 20 percent of California's 15 million registered voters are independent, and unaffiliated with any party. In this election, however, the Democratic Party allowed independents to vote in its primary election. In Los Angeles, nearly 190,000 independent voters did so. Unfortunately, at least 49,500 of those voters will not have their votes counted, according to this report released Monday by Dean Logan, Acting Registrar of Voters for Los Angeles County.

It turns out that in LA county independents, who are also known as "decline-to-state" voters, have to jump through an extra hurdle to get their votes counted. They not only have to proactively request a partisan ballot; they also have to mark two bubbles on that ballot to indicate their choice for president - one indicating the party the voter is voting with, and a second indicating the candidate for which the voter is voting. This need to mark two bubbles makes no sense from the voter's perspective -- nowhere else, in no other situation, are voters asked to make to two marks to indicate their choice. In LA, this requirement was entirely driven by the voting technology the county uses. Without that first mark, the software cannot determine which candidate is awarded the vote.

Although Mr. Logan has apologized for this error, it is truly inexcusable, especially in light of the fact that this problem occurred two times previously, in the 2004 and 2006 California primaries. Logan previously told the LA County supervisors that only forty percent of the ballots from decline-to-state voters in those two elections were counted. The county knew there was a huge undervote occurring for a certain class of voters, and yet continued to use the same voting system and ballot design. Why? The ballot is designed based on what works best for election administrators, not what works best for the voters.

While it's likely true that some of the votes cannot be counted with 100 percent accuracy, many of them could be. This is an odd election, one where the voting process is administered by the state and counties, but the impact of the results are determined by the parties. The county should count those ballots by hand, to the best of their ability, and give the results to the Democatic and American Independent parties and let them decide what to do with them. If 90 percent of the ballots can be counted with a 95 percent degree of confidence in the accuracy, that's probably good enough for the parties.

In the case of the California Democratic Party, delegate votes are awarded on a proportional basis, by congressional district. There are 18 congressional districts contained entirely or partly in Los Angeles county. These include CD 22, CDs 23-39, CD 42, and CD 46. In CD 29, for example, which is entirely within LA County, Hillary Clinton recieved 42,144 votes while Barack Obama received 35,735 votes. The difference between the two candidates is 6,409; the number of decline-to-state voters registered in that district is 66,254. While we don't know how many actually voted in the election, if the uncounted decline-to-state voters' ballots were counted, the results in some congressional district would change and in turn, possibly the number of delegates awarded to Obama and Clinton.

In addition to the very real possiblity that the delegate vote count from California could be impacted depending on whether or not these votes get counted, there's another reason to count them, even if the count isn't 100 percent accurate. People who vote want to know that their vote mattered. They want to see it show up somewhere. I know I'm not alone when I log online after an election, look at the total vote for a candidate and get a feeling of satisfaction knowing that my vote made the total 1,404,568 instead of 1,404,567.

There are 50,000 California voters living in Los Angeles who are being denied the satisfaction of seeing their vote show up. These are people who took time out from their day to go to the polls, who went through extra hoops to request a partisan ballot in the first place, and who are likely left feeling that voting is a futile exercise.

At least 90,000 undervotes reported in Los Angeles County

2008-02-07T09:50:00.001-08:00

Today's L.A. Daily News features this story by Troy Anderson reporting on Acting L.A. County Registrar of Voters Dean Logan's responses to questions from county supervisors yesterday regarding the "double bubble" undervote problem in Los Angeles, in which decline-to-state voters were required to mark two bubbles on the ballot to indicate their vote in the Democratic presidential primary. The registrar estimates that half of the ballots cast by decline-to-state voters did not include the second mark on the ballot and would not be automatically counted. Tens of thousands of late-arriving vote-by-mail ballots may also lack the second mark. He also informed the supervisors that in the 2004 and 2006 election, only about 40 percent of the county's decline-to-state voters' votes were counted.

It's always hard to see what's missing. In this case, there has been a pattern of huge undervotes for a certain class of voters in Los Angeles county that have failed to show up in the county's vote totals. That the problem would be known by election officials and go uncorrected for several election cycles is astonishing. The L.A. County supervisors, district attorney and the Secretary of State are all investigating.

Fortunately, Secretary of State Debra Bowen's election security orders require counties to include undervotes and overvotes in their post-election audits. With that data being publicly reported, it is more likely that a significant undervote in a jurisdiction, such as what has been found in LA, will be detected in the future.

The LA Daily News story is featured below.

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About half of all 189,000 Los Angeles County nonpartisan ballots cast in the Tuesday primary were not counted because of confusion over ballot design, the county's top elections official said Wednesday.

And acting Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan said potentially tens of thousands more may also be affected because several hundred thousand absentee and provisional ballots are still left to count.

The problems surfaced Tuesday as the registrar's office began receiving reports throughout the day from crossover voters at the polls confused about how to mark their ballots.

While election experts said they doubt the problems will alter the outcome of the statewide vote, it could affect the number of delegates each candidate gets - potentially determining the Democratic nominee for president.

"Los Angeles County is the largest election jurisdiction in the country so anything that goes wrong in L.A. goes wrong on a big scale," said Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation.

"If these under-votes get counted, it could change the delegates in some California congressional districts."

Under questioning by the Board of Supervisors on Wednesday, Logan said about half of the county's 189,000 nonpartisan and decline-to-state voters who cast ballots did not fill in a party box at the top of the ballot required for their vote for a Democratic presidential candidate to count.

Logan said that amid widespread concern about voting accuracy, he will conduct a 1 percent manual recount during the 28-day election canvass to determine the exact number of disenfranchised voters.

Logan said it will then be determined how many of those votes should be added to the counts for Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Logan said he also plans to convene a meeting of interested parties to determine how to ensure that ballots used in the June and November elections are less confusing.

Alexander said she's never heard of another jurisdiction in the nation where so many votes were uncounted. In the 2000 Florida voting dispute, only several thousands votes were in question.

"Clinton won the popular vote by a comfortable margin, but popular votes don't get you the nomination," Alexander said of California's Democratic primary Tuesday.

"There is a very real possibility that these under-votes could help sway the election results for the Democratic presidential primary contest."

Meanwhile, campaign officials for Obama said they received hundreds of calls from voters concerned that their votes weren't counted. Campaign officials said they also received complaints from independents who said they were not allowed to vote for a Democratic candidate.

A lawyer for the Courage Campaign, a voting-rights group, sent a letter Wednesday to Logan demanding that he ensure that votes are properly counted.

"We can't have another Florida 2000," said Rick Jacobs, founder and chairman of the Courage Campaign.

"It's important for the next two elections in June and November."

Logan said he will work with the Secretary of State's Office to examine the issue.

The county has more than 800,000 nonpartisan voters. The controversy involves voters registered as Decline-to-State who chose to cross over to the American Independent or Democratic Party ballots.

They were required to mark the party box at the top of the ballot - along with their choice for president - for the vote to count.

"We got hundreds of phone calls about this, if not thousands," said Debbie Mesloh, the California director of communications for Obama, who received 41 percent of the county vote compared with Clinton at 55 percent.

"We are telling people who have concerns to contact the Secretary of State's Office."

Officials also expressed alarm after Logan said that only about 40 percent of ballots cast by nonpartisan voters for president in the 2004 and 2006 elections were counted.

"None of us know if these (uncounted votes) could tip the election, but there is a possibility here," Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky said.

Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo said no other county in the state has had this type of problem and that he wants to work with the county and Secretary of State Debra Bowen to ensure that it doesn't occur again.

"Other counties," Delgadillo said, "were able to see around the corner and had the ability to solve their problems before the election."

California election results and more on LA's "double bubble" trouble

2008-02-06T14:29:00.000-08:00

Election results from California's primary are posted on the Secretary of State's web site. So far the site shows that over 7 million votes were cast in yesterday's election; however, this does not include late "vote-by-mail" ballots that are returned to polling places on Election Day, or provisional ballots. Like a lot of folks, I'm curious about how many ballots still remain to be counted. There is a place on the Secretary of State's web site where this data is going to be published, but there are no details available yet.

Meanwhile, many questions are being asked about Los Angeles County's ballot layout, which requires decline-to-state voters who voted in the Democratic primary to fill in two bubbles in order for their ballot to be counted -- one that indicates they are voting in the Democratic primary, and another one that indicates the candidate for whom they are voting. There is widespread concern that many LA County decline-to-state voters overlooked the first bubble and simply voted for their candidate of choice. The county's acting Registrar of Voters, Dean Logan, issued this news release stating that:

"In cooperation and consultation with the Secretary of State we will seek to determine whether or not this issue has potential impact on the outcome of the Democratic Presidential contest. If such an impact is established, we will exhaust every available option under state law to count cross over votes on nonpartisan ballots where the intent of the voter can be clearly and definitively determined."

While it appears unlikely that the double bubble problem in Los Angeles will affect the outcome of the popular vote statewide, it is possible that it could impact the outcome of Democatic party delegate votes, many of which are allocated by congressional district. There are 18 congressional districts that are wholly or partially included in Los Angeles County, and the margin of difference between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in some of these districts is far narrower than the number of LA county decline-to-state voters registered in the district. **

On this post-election day, we are also responding to emails from several decline-to-state voters from around the state who were not allowed to vote a partisan ballot at their polling places yesterday. It's unclear how widespread this problem is, but it is unfortunate that any voter would be disenfranchised, and such problems could be avoided if pollworkers were instructed by state law to inform decline-to-state voters of their rights to vote in partisan primaries.

** A clarification: Since the Democratic Party's delegate votes are awarded proportionally, neither Obama or Clinton "win" congressional districts. However, a large undervote for either candidate could reduce the total number of delegate votes awarded to that candidate.

Counting up California's Presidential primary votes

2008-02-05T16:24:00.000-08:00

California election results will be available from the Secretary of State's web site this evening after the polls close at 8 p.m. The first results likely to appear will be the early vote-by-mail ballots. These are the estimated 2 million ballots California voters returned by mail prior to today. They are typically counted on Election Day and the results are ready to be announced as soon as polls close.

The next set of ballots that will start showing up will be the polling place ballots. The speed with which these results get posted will largely depend on what kind of voting equipment a county is using. Counties using in-precinct scanners to count paper ballots at the polls will likely get their polling place ballot results in faster than counties that are centrally counting paper ballots. Three counties will be using electronic voting machines. Check out CVF's County by County Directory of Voting Systems to see what kind of system each county is using.

The last set of ballots that will be counted are the vote-by-mail ballots that are returned to polling places on Election Day, and provisional ballots which are used by voters whose registration status is in question, or who failed to receive or misplaced their vote-by-mail ballot. These ballots may account for as much as 25 percent of all of the ballots being cast in this election, and they take considerably longer to count because they must be carefully verified before being counted.

So, it may be Thursday or even Friday before we know which Presidential candidates win the popular vote in California. And it may be weeks before we actually know how many delegate votes are awarded to each candidate. Both major parties award their delegate votes by congressional district, so in order to determine how many delegates each candidate has won you need to know what the results are by congressional district. I checked in with the Secretary of State's office on this matter earlier today, and the staff informed me that the Secretary of State's election returns web page will feature election results by congressional district.

Counting the votes in California, issues with LA's ballot layout

2008-02-05T13:07:00.000-08:00

This AP story by Alison Hoffman explains why California's vote count will likely be delayed, and also the issue that has arisen with the way LA County's Decline-to-State ballot is laid out for those voters who wish to vote in a partisan primary. An image of the ballot layout in question is available from this web site. Excerpts from the AP story are below.

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Election officials throughout California worked furiously Monday to count as many early absentee ballots as possible, hoping to get caught up before an expected crush of Election Day ballots that could significantly delay final tallies.

More than 2.2 million mail-in ballots have been returned to registrars' offices. But with more than 3 million outstanding and an expected high turnout at polling places, registrars predicted as much as 25 percent of the overall vote may go uncounted on Election Night.

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Voter-outreach groups criticized the ballot in Los Angeles County, saying it could disenfranchise independent voters.

The Democratic and American Independent party ballots given to independent voters who request them include an extra bubble specifying that the ballot is for that party's primary. The bubble appears before the list of presidential candidates.

If voters fail to mark that spot, the county's scanning machines will not read the selection for president.

Lawyers for the Los Angeles-based Courage Campaign said that violates California election law. The group sent a letter to Los Angeles County officials threatening legal action if the issue isn't addressed before Tuesday's election.

"We did talk to the county, and they admit it's a problem," Courage Campaign chairman Rick Jacobs said. "They just don't seem to know what to do about it."

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Los Angeles County's top election official said he did not think most voters would skip the required ballot entry. Primary elections in 2004 and 2006 had the same requirement.

"It would almost be counterintuitive for someone to miss," said Dean Logan, the acting county registrar. "We have put this information in voter education materials, and we've provided real clear instructions."