[UPDATED 2/27/08 2:00pm PT, after speaking with Bowen’s office about this. The update, which includes her current response to Logan’s proposed counting scheme, is posted at the bottom of this report.]
I hate to counter the adulation of so many of the good groups out there claiming “victory” and “a happy ending” today in the “Double Bubble” ballot dispute in Los Angeles County, but I must. The “victory” they are now referring to, with the best of intentions, as “Great news!” is much less than it appears. Though if you don’t look closely, it might otherwise look like a “victory.” Unfortunately, it isn’t.
Unless something changes, and quickly, Los Angeles County’s acting Registrar of Voters Dean Logan is preparing to disenfranchise thousands of voters who cast legal ballots in the Super Tuesday Democratic primary election.
In the 3-page letter [PDF] sent by Logan to CA Sec. of State Debra Bowen yesterday, the recently-arrived, but still-befuddled, county clerk details how he now plans to potentially toss out thousands of votes, while inappropriately awarding disproportionate votes in favor of only some candidates, in response to the “Double Bubble” ballot debacle reported by The BRAD BLOG (most recently here), in great detail previously…
Some weeks ago Logan asserted it would be “impossible to determine” the intent of tens of thousands of ballots cast in the state’s open Democratic primary in a way that would ensure voter intent was recorded accurately. Thankfully, he has now amended his position, after a directive from Bowen, claiming he can count some, but not all of them. To carry out his latest ill-conceived scheme, he has now devised a ridiculous method to count what he inaccurately describes as, “all votes where the voter intent can be reasonably and legally determined.”
That’s a small step up from his previous unsupportable position, but still seriously flawed and still failing the voters of the country’s most populous county.
In addition to still disenfranchising thousands of voters, and inaccurately offering an undeserved margin of victory to some candidates in various precincts through his planned scheme, he is also setting a horrible precedent for counting ballots — or in this case, not counting them — in the state in the future. That, even though there is a perfectly accurate and simple way to count almost every single ballot cast in the election…if Logan bothers to do so.
What happened, in brief…
In short, anywhere from a conservative 50,000 to 100,000 ballots legally cast in the open Democratic Primary by Non-Partisan (NP, sometimes known as Decline-to-State or DTS) voters could not be counted accurately by the optical-scan counting machines in L.A. County after the election. The reason is that, due to a ridiculous scheme put in place by LA’s previous Registrar, who quit just prior to the election, NP voters who chose to “cross over” and vote in either the open Dem or American Independent Party primaries had to fill in a second bubble on the paper ballot specifying which primary their NP ballot should be counted in.
The instructions to fill in that second bubble, in addition to the voter’s Presidential selection were unclear at best. The result is thousands of ballots which contain votes for a Presidential Candidate, but where no party preference (DEM or AI) is specified.
Further compounding the problem is that the ballot design was such that the bubbles numbered from #8 through #10 were used to select candidates from both the DEM and AI primary, depending on which party’s primary the NP voter intended to vote in. Bubbles #11 through #15 were for Dem candidates only, since that party had more candidates on their primary ballot than the AI party did.
The type of ballot card used in L.A. County has only bubbles/ovals on it, no candidate names, to be filled in by the voter after the ballot card is placed into the party-appropriate ballot template/booklet (see graphic at left). So it’s impossible to determine — by looking at the ballot alone — for which party’s primary, a Presidential vote was meant to be cast, unless the “Double Bubble” has been filled in.
However, as I described on February 14th, almost every single ballot can be counted accurately in accord with the voter’s intent, as required by CA state law, if the Registrar bothers to examine the poll rosters which will reveal how many NP voters chose to cross over and vote in either the Dem or AI primaries in each precinct.
My description of that method of determining nearly all of the currently uncounted/miscounted ballots was followed by a letter from Bowen to Logan, requesting that he inspect the poll books immediately in order to determine the data needed to count as many of the ballots as possible.
He has now done so.
Logan’s bad new plan…
Today’s letter from Logan announces that he plans to:
a) Count all unbubbled NP ballots with a Presidential selection on them as Democratic votes, in precincts where the pollbooks show no NP-AI ballots were cast.
b) Count all unbubbled NP ballots with a Presidential selection in bubbles #11 through #15 as Democratic votes, and discard all votes recorded in the #8 through #10 bubbles, if any NP-AI crossover votes are noted in the pollbooks as having been cast in the precinct.
Logan’s plan to discard thousands of votes cast in the #8 to #10 bubbles (candidate names were rotated at the various precincts) is ridiculous, unnecessary and unfair to candidates who happen to be in those slots on the ballot. The ill-conceived plan will also lead to a lopsided result in favor of candidates lucky enough to have been listed on the ballot in the #11 to #15 bubbles in any particular precinct.
Rather, as we suggested previously, due to the small number of NP-AI votes cast overall in the election, nearly every unbubbled NP ballot with a Presidential selection on it can be counted accurately if all such ballots are first counted as Democratic votes, with the number of unaccounted for NP-AI votes in any precinct then being subtracted from each candidate’s total in the precinct.
In that way, we can be assured that every vote that can be counted, has been counted, and has been counted accurately, as the voter intended.
As Logan currently plans to count the votes, a lopsided result will occur and, additionally, thousands of ballots will have been needlessly — and illegally — discarded and uncounted.
What’s Wrong with Logan’s Plan…
Consider the following imaginary L.A. County precinct to help understand what is admittedly a confusing process, thanks to former Registrar of Voters Conny McCormack. The solution, however, to the mess she created (she knew that some 40% of NP ballots had gone similarly uncounted in three previous elections, but didn’t bother to change the ballot design), is thankfully a simple one.
Sample L.A. County PrecinctNP-Dem voters according to the poll roster: 100
NP-AI voters according to the poll roster: 5NP ballots with a Presidential candidate selected and the party bubble filled in as…
Dem: 51
AI: 4Therefore…
Total uncounted/unbubbled NP ballots with a Presidential candidate selected: 50From subsets of…
Unaccounted for (uncounted) NP-Dem ballots: 49
Unaccounted for (uncounted) NP-AI ballots: 1To assure that as many votes as possible are counted accurately — without legal question and to the accurate intent of the voters in our sample precinct — Logan simply needs to count all 50 of the uncounted ballots as Dem votes, and then subtract 1 vote from each Dem candidate to assure that none of them received a vote they were not entitled to.
A small number of ballots, under this method, would not be counted as cast, but, given the disproportionately huge number of NP-Dem ballots versus the relatively tiny number of NP-AI ballots, the resulting uncounted votes would likely be less than the “acceptable” error-rate of L.A.’s current optical-scan counting machines anyway.
By contrast, according to Logan’s currently planned method, a large percentage of those 50 ballots, in our sample precinct, would go unnecessarily uncounted, simply because they happen to have been cast for one of the candidates with the bad luck of being assigned one of the bubbles numbered from #8 to #10 in that particular location.
The result of Logan’s method, aside from unnecessarily discarding thousands of legal votes, could also mean a potentially lopsided count for candidates who are unfortunate enough to find themselves listed in Logan’s “uncountable” bubbles #8 to #10.
Eg. In some imaginary precinct, Clinton may be listed at bubble #8 and would have received 100 attempted votes. Obama might be listed on bubble #11 and would have also received 100 attempted votes. In this case, by Logan’s method, if a single unaccounted for NP-AI ballot was cast in the precinct, Obama would receive all of the 100 votes he’s entitled to, but Clinton would receive 0 votes. In that scenario, a likely one in many of L.A.’s more than 4000 precincts, Obama would end up receiving an inappropriate 100 vote advantage over Clinton in that particular precinct.
Paging Debra Bowen. Again…
California’s Sec. of State Bowen stepped in previously to order Logan to review the precinct poll rosters to collect the data needed to accurately count as many ballots as possible.
In her Feb. 14 letter [PDF] she wrote that “If the intent of any of these voters can be ascertained, Los Angeles County would be in the position to count votes for president that, to date, have gone uncounted,” after examining the rosters.
She went on to assert to Logan that they “both share the goal of accurately counting each and every vote in every case in which the voter’s intent can be clearly determined,” and of the importance of “reassur[ing] the public that every effort is being made to count every vote where the voter’s intent can be determined.”
If Bowen is to be taken at her word then, and I have full confidence that she can, she now needs to step in again and order Logan to use the collected poll roster data to “count every vote where the voter’s intent can be determined,” since it should now be easy to do with the number of NP voters, as listed in the poll roster, at Logan’s disposal following his review.
If Logan is allowed to toss out thousands of ballots, which could otherwise be easily counted, it will set a horrible precedent for vote counting in the state of California under Bowen’s watch.
Count the ballots. It’s the law…
Rick Jacobs of the Courage Campaign, who has been on the front line of the “Double Bubble” ballot battle since even prior to Election Day, tells me his organization’s analysis of the uncounted ballots has determined that the ultimate results will not be changed if the currently uncounted ballots are counted. I haven’t done a similar analysis, so I’ll presume his group’s analysis is correct, though AP suggests that delegate totals may, in fact, be changed depending on the final results.
Nonetheless, no matter how the results may or may not be changed in the ultimate outcome of the election, Bowen must refuse to allow Logan’s current scheme, due to the terrible precedent that it will set. Tossing out countable votes should never be an option, and certainly not one that Bowen should countenance during her so-far impressive tenure.
She needs to step in once again and demand that every vote be counted, as required by both state law, which requires that the election code “shall be liberally construed so that the real will of the electors will not be defeated by any informality,” and the state Constitution of California which states, in Article II in no uncertain terms: “A voter who casts a vote in an election in accordance with the laws of this State shall have that vote counted.”
The clock is ticking. Local results must be certified before the 5th of March. Count the ballots, Mr. Logan. All of them.
UPDATE 2/27/08 9:47am PT: According to Pasadena Star-News, Bowen’s press spokes is quoted as saying: “Secretary Bowen is pleased that the county is taking steps to count all the votes where voter intent could be reasonably determined.” While that’s a bit vague, and leaves a door to counting all ballots open as I see it, I’ve got calls in to the SoS’ office to see if I can learn more. If they confirm that her office is really fine with tossing thousands of countable votes, as you may suspect, I’d disagree. Will update here with anything additional that I’m able to learn from them.
UPDATE 2/27/08 2:00pm PT: I’ve now gotten to chat, about all of this, with Bowen’s spokesperson, Nicole Winger, whose carefully worded statement to the Pasadena Star-News is mentioned in the update above. As I suggested there, her statement was indeed “vague” and not accidentally so. We chatted about the details of the full article above to make sure she understood that Logan is proposing discarding possibly thousands of ballots that can — and according to CA state law and constitution, must — be counted. She will be sharing that information with the others in the office, including Bowen.
For the moment, she tells me that Bowen’s office is still learning the details of Logan’s proposed plan.
He had asked, in his Feb 25th letter [PDF] to her, detailing his new plan, for her “concurrence with the approach and intent of” his proposed counting scheme.
However, Bowen’s office has notably not issued one at this time. For the moment, that’s about all I can report. Will update again when/if things change…
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Can she fire him like Ohio’s SoS can in the same circumstance?
(At this point, there’s apparently not going to be any sort of court challenge to any of this, so the whole thing becomes an acedemic exercise, but…)
Your ‘subtraction’ scheme may seem fair to you – and I certainly see its value – but there’s no way in hell it would ever hold up in court. And I assume Logan and Bowen understand that (my guess is what they propose would also be overturned in court).
I’m with CourageCampaign on this one: declare victory on the votes that will have been ‘recovered’ and move on.
I am the Vice Chairman of the American Independent Party of California. I attended as an observer last week of the trial count of the
one persent review. I notice an employee writing
and erasing in one of the precinct rosters and
getting reprimanded by her supervisor for the issue of writing in the rosters but not being
reprimanded for making erasures in the same rosters. Further, I noticed that a Registered
Republic was given a Democratic Ballot with a
non inclusion on the provisional listing of ballots, viz., Republican voted in Democratic
Primary.
I was also informed by an employee of the Registrar of Voters that some of DTS voters
tried to cast there DTS ballots in the
Republican Primary. It was detected, because
some DTS ballots showed voting in the Republican
fields, viz., bubbles higher in number to the
DEM fields (in the bubbles above the DEM fields.
As of now, I can not see why votes casted in bubbles #’s 8 – 10 can be counted correctly because of the overlap vote. I doubt that there
was any precinct out of the 4766 that DTS voters
stated 100 percent that they wanted to vote as a
DEM in the Roster of Voters. Therefore, I do not
see any votes being counted in bubbles 8, 9, & 10.
Mr. Ed asked:
No. There is no such provision in state law in CA as far as I know.
Robert Earle said:
Why? Every vote counted with that plan is guaranteed to be accurate, and in accordance with state law requiring that ballots must be counted if voter intent can be determined.
Are you suggesting that Logan’s current plan of randomly discarding thousands of votes for no reason would somehow be more in accordance with the law?? What law would that be??
Mark Seidenberg said:
What does that have to do with it? If there was 5 (unaccounted for) NP-AI voters in a precinct, then you simply subtract 5 votes from each Dem candidate. Every vote counted is accurately counted.
Where’s the problem?
HAVA stipulates a maximum allowable error rate of 1 in 500,000 for voting machines. How ’bout stipulating a maximum allowable error rate for the Registrar of Voters? If the allowable rate were applied to Mr. Logan, he would be out of a job by now.
one one-thousand one two one-thousand two three one-thousand four …
Should be done by summer … zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz …
Real high tech there LA … what’s next public transportation by hot-air balloons?
Brad Friedman is Comment #6 said:
Where is the problem?
There was an overlapping vote in bubbles 8, 9, & 10. What if a DTS voter broadcast of party pre-
erence or lack there of was just a ruse -baruch ha-Shem- to protect their secret ballot vote. Again the ballot design was very flawed, there
is no way to know which voter was connected to
which ballot. Counting bubbles # 8, 9. & 10 is
just a wild guess, because there were two choices in each of the 8, 9, and 10 bubble spots.
I do not believe that you will find any of the
4766 precincts that show 100 % DTS-DEM or 100 %
DTS-AIP on their Roster of Voters written in by
that precinct clerk. At least from the Roster
of Voters 1 % sample, I saw last week there were
zero % of precincts that show 100 % of anything.
The Democratic Party had little interest in the
counting of these DTS ballots, because I saw no
one with the Democratic Party in that 7th floor
room of the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voter
at Norwalk, CA observing that mish-mash (hugger-mugger) review of that 1% precinct DTS practice
tally last week.
Mark Seidenberg –
I think you need to read the actual article above that you are commenting on.
I speak to all of the concerns that you mention. You are inccorrect when you say that the ballots cannot be counted accurately due to the #8 to #10 bubbles being used by both DTS-AI and DTS-Dem voters.
Please read the full article above.
Re: Logan’s plan
“Secretary of State Debra Bowen’s office said she was satisfied with the outcome.”
” ‘Secretary Bowen is pleased that the county is taking steps to count all the votes where voter intent could be reasonably determined,'” spokeswoman Nicole Winger said.”
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_8374207
Comment of Rick Jacobs, chair of the Courage Campaign, on Logan’s plan: “I want to thank Mr. Logan for taking a very difficult situation and doing everything he could … we ended up finding the best solution possible.”
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_8374207
“In her Feb. 14 letter [PDF] she (Bowen) wrote that “If the intent of any of these voters can be ascertained, Los Angeles County would be in the position to count votes for president that, to date, have gone uncounted,” after examining the rosters.”
Ultimately, I think that only those precincts where there were no AIP voters on the roster, can be counted.
I understand your idea Brad and I think it’s probably the most fair way to go about counting ALL the ballots, but it would not uphold ascertaining the intent of a voter. It would just throw out a couple ballots. I don’t know if the law would uphold disenfranchising a few voters over disenfranchising thousands by not counting those unmarked (party preference)ballots in a precinct at all. What makes sense is not always what’s in the law.
(However, I think that McCormack/Logan should be hauled into court for disenfranchising voters. This happened before in LA County and more than once is not an accident)
I believe that Logan’s scheme is much worse though. He would be selectively disenfranchising, discarding selective votes for a candidate.
Someone ought to know, since they have to know to count the ballots, who was put where in the ballot rotation. That information might be interesting although I bet hard to get, as to who might win/lose the most with Logan’s scheme.
If this is the best he can do, after accepting and defending the McCormack joke of a ballot, LA County needs to tell him to get out of the election business.
As for the 1% recount and messing with the precinct rosters (#3), that has the flavor of the recount fixing in Ohio. Another red flag.
Brad at #5 (and Mark):
A couple weeks ago now, I heard Rick Hasan (election law professor at Loyola Marymount) on the radio talking about the ‘double-bubble’ problem. And he reminded everyone about the mayoral election in San Diego in 2004 (?), where one candidate mounted a write-in campaign, and came close to winning. And she would have won, except that some number – five thousand or so – votes for her were disallowed, in court.
At the time in San Diego, voters wanting to write in a candidate had to both write the name AND fill in a ‘bubble’ indicating their intent to ‘write-in’. On the disallowed ballots, the voters had failed to fill in the ‘write-in’ bubble.
The analogy to LA County’s ‘double-bubble’ problem is obvious: voters being required to take a second action to validate their ballots; voters failing to take that second action having their votes discounted.
In San Diego, the inference of what the voter intended was certainly more simple and clear than what you propose (and more so than what Logan and Bowen propose) – they had literally written the name of the candidate they wanted to vote for on the ballot! And still it was disallowed. Sorry to say, but it makes me think your plan’s chances of success pretty slim (should a challenge ever come. Hey Mark – do you know if the AI Party is contemplating any sort of court action?)
– Robert
Another thought:
Logan may be just running out the clock.
He knows he can count precincts where no AIP voters were indicated.
But he’s thrown in a silly scheme along with it.
By the time the haggling is over, there will be no more time.
I would like to see Bowen take over the reins and get the job done that can be done, then serve notice to the LA County head honchos that they have to get the mess that is the LA County elections cleaned up immediately- which means getting Logan out of there and insuring that McCormack has no more influence or any other traps awaiting the county left over from her.
I don’t know if ‘running out the clock’ is really fair.
At the end of election day, working at the polls, one thing a pollworker has to do is page through the Roster of Voters, counting the number of signatures. It usually takes two or three passes to be sure the count is correct (ie getting the same answer twice).
So I’ve got a pretty good idea of what the examination of the Rosters looking for the NP->DEM and NP->AI notations entails. It is a manual process – no way at all to automate it, have it done by computer, etc. – and my guess is that it would take maybe an average of 15 minutes per book. (Can you do a book faster than 15 minutes? Yes. Can you do your 47th book of the day – accurately – in less than 15 minutes? Probably not.)
So, more than 4000 Roster books at 15 minutes per book. That’s more than 1000 man-hours. Now, I have no idea what sort of manpower the Registrar’s office has to throw at something like this. But 1000 hours is probably no small amount of work.
I will also point out that for the first time, they are being asked to stage two primaries in a single spring, and – we certainly hope – they are trying to re-design their ballots and voting mechanism before June. So I doubt there are very many people sitting around, twiddling their thumbs – intentionally or otherwise.
Badger #13 said:
Nonsense. How would it not “ascertain the intent of the voter”? It would do so 100% accurately.
Also nonsense. The current plan by Logan is to count some ballots in a precinct (if the selections were in the #11 to #15 bubble), but toss out the rest (in the #8 to #10) bubble. Randomly discarding thousands of votes for no reason.
Why is that a better plan? In the meantime, there is no way to ascertain the intent of the “few voters” you suggest would be disenfranchised by my plan. If their votes can’t be counted with certainty, they can’t be counted by CA law.
Yup. And, as noted in my original article above, that is decidedly against both the law and the Constitution of CA. Want a lawsuit? Logan’s plan is a great way to trigger one.
Robert Earle –
The horrible and legally unsound San Diego decision you refer to is a fine example. Setting bad precedent now, will hurt later.
Because an awful judge made a terrible decision, supporting the even worse San Diego Registrar of Voters (Mikel Haas) at the time, is disgraceful. But NOT counting the ballots of voters, and NOT ensuring ballots are counting to their intent, as CA law requires, was a hallmark of Haas’ horrible administration of elections in San Diego.
State law having been discounted in San Diego, is not a legitimate reason to ignore it again in Los Angeles.
(NOTE: BRAD BLOG commenter “OMS Media” is Don Haas, brother of failed SD registrar Mikel. No doubt, he’ll jump in soon with some misinformation in order to try to protect his brother’s bad name.)
Florida and Ohio all over again!!!
Brad, I said:
“I understand your idea Brad and I think it’s probably the most fair way to go about counting ALL the ballots, but it would not uphold ascertaining the intent of a voter. It would just throw out a couple ballots. I don’t know if the law would uphold disenfranchising a few voters over disenfranchising thousands by not counting those unmarked (party preference)ballots in a precinct at all. What makes sense is not always what’s in the law.”
If you subtract some votes in some precincts, because you can’t insure voter intent of all the ballots, that is still disenfranchisement. The law is about “intent,” not how many ballots can be counted if we subtract x amount from the total to compensate for the lack of a second mark on the ballot, based on how many people indicated they were voting in the AIP primary.
You said in a reply:
“What does that have to do with it? If there was 5 (unaccounted for) NP-AI voters in a precinct, then you simply subtract 5 votes from each Dem candidate. Every vote counted is accurately counted.”
“Where’s the problem?”
Brad, maybe I’m being thick, but say if you have 4 Dem candidates, and you subtract 5 votes from each, you have now discarded 20 votes- which is 15 more than the 5 AIP votes. So you have disenfranchised at least 15 Dem voters, correct? And maybe those ballots did indicate a Dem party preference.
It’s not that I don’t think your idea has merit, I said it was the most fair one proposed. Reasonable certainty in precincts with no AIP voters can be concluded about intent. What I did try to point out is that what the law says is about intent. IMHO, I think that would be interpreted strictly as intent, and where no provision exists in law for what to do in a mess like this, even your great idea is not going to be upheld by the law. I don’t see a separate provision for individual intent and intent of the many. That is what I am suggesting. Someone with legal expertise can weigh in here. To often, when it gets down to the nitty gritty, the judge has to uphold (or should) what the law says. The issue is what the law says and what it will uphold.
If the law is about intent and also about counting every ballot cast, then it’s going to be a decision about the two laws and how to combine them under the intent of each law.
As for running out the clock, I was referring to the counting of the disenfranchised ballots, not the poll books per se. i.e., as a way to create haggling over Logan’s silly scheme which would run out the time available for counting those ballots, therefore, Logan doesn’t have to get them counted.
Another problem with Logan’s scheme is that it neglects the possibility, for example, that a precinct has three DTS-AI voters who all filled out their ballots correctly with the appropriate AI bubble filled in. In that case, we could reasonably surmise that the remaining ballots in question were intended as Democratic Party votes.
I would be curious to know how many poll books actually show entries for DTS-AI voters. It’s plausible that many “independent” voters got mistakenly identified as AI Party members.
I find it interesting that nobody, including Mark above, seems to have any concerns about the tally for the AI Party. Oh well!
I must protest. Dean Logan is not “befuddled.” He is setting expectations and procedures for the general election. Whether he is a partisan or simply available to the highest bidder, he is demonstrating his ability to muddle or throw an election. What he is doing now is simply advertising for what he can do in the future.
Dolphyn –
If you go here…
http://regrec.co.la.ca.us/GENERAL/Statement_Votes_Cast.cfm
… and open up the ‘Precinct Bulletins’, you can see on a precinct-by-precinct basis how many precincts had NP (or DTS) voters who did indeed mark their ballots to ;cross-over’ to the AI primary. No, I haven’t looked at all 4300, but many, if not most, have NP->AI voters. This isn’t the Roster books, but it is a pretty good indication that many, or most, Roster books are also going to have notations of NP->AI voters.
Brad, once again you are a hero for our EI movement. As the co-chair of Stand with Debra Bowen, I am outraged that LA county is doing all it can to flout the law, disenfranchise voters, and try to embarrass Debra. It is the ghost of Conny McCormack we are dealing with here, and her replacement seems to have learned well from her. I also recall this guy had problems up in Washington state. What were the LA county supervisors thinking-fraud?
Badger #20 said:
It is. And it’s unfortunate (thanks Conny McCormack!) but California law also says you cannot count a vote if you can’t ascertain certainty of voter intent. The plan I suggest in the article above counts the maximum number of ballots on which voter intent can 100% be discerned as certain.
Correct. Though there is no choice, regrettably.
No, if they stated a party preference, they are not a part of this counting at all. If they stated a party preference, the ballot would be counted no matter what.
None is needed. In my suggested plan, the intent of every single individual ballot that can be counted, *will* be counted accurately to the voter’s intent.
As to the legal issues, unless there is some law here that I’m so far unfamiliar with (which could certainly be the case, though I’m not aware of one), my plan meets every single election code provision and constitutional provision on this matter. At least those which am familiar with at this time. I’m certainly open to any specific legal argument/cite that would counter my suggested plan.
Dolphyn #21 said:
Right. Instead of getting that deep into the weeds, I’m presuming he’s already figured that one out, and is only referring to unaccounted for ballots in his suggested scheme. I do realize that may be rather presumptuous of me, given his record, but for now, I’ll still allow him the benefit of that particular doubt.
Logan’s vote counting plan: “A lot of credit goes to Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who suggested a process to identify voters’ intent, and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who provided leadership in resolving a complex situation.”
http://www.dailybreeze.com/ci_8388982
Logan is attempting to hide behind Bowen, despite the fact that she did NOT recommend, or even approve of, the scheme that Logan is currently set to use to count the votes (and needlessly toss out thousands of them).
In fact, he asked for swift “concurrence” from her for his scheme, in his letter to her, which she has still NOT granted at this time, as I noted in my latest update to the story above yesterday.
Having spoken again with the office today, they cannot add anything publicly to comments I quoted from spokesperson Nicole Winger yesterday on this matter.
Dean Logan has posted on the Registrar’s website a notice that they will begin counting the cross-over votes tomorrow, starting at (Saturday) at 7:30 am in Norwalk with a Logic and Accuracy test of the MTS Central Vote Tabulation System.
http://lavote.net/ (click on “Notice of Supplemental Cross Over Vote Tally”
If Bowen disagrees with Logan’s plan, she needs to tell him soon.