We’ve got two shameful situations with early and absentee voting. Well, there are many more, no doubt, but for purposes of this article, we’ll focus on the outrage in D.C., where thousands of voters are not receiving their absentee ballots, so they’re being forced to go vote at county headquarters. And out here in Los Angeles, the world’s largest voting jurisdiction, with just one, single early voting location.
News on both of those scandals — and the response we received from our inquiry about the L.A. situation from L.A. County Registrar Dean Logan — follow below…
On the D.C. scandal…This from “Fox News” today:
In a city with no early voting rules, elections officials have been accommodating the in-person vote since many voters said they had requested ballots by mail but none came. With the deadline for absentee voting looming, voters said they didn’t want to miss their chance to participate in the milestone election.
“I called them up this morning and they couldn’t guarantee that my ballot would arrive by tomorrow and that I should come in and vote in person,” Bella Sewal told FOX News.
…
Washington, D.C. — like many states across the country — has experienced its share of voting headaches. Election board officials said they sent out more than 16,000 absentee ballots but do not know yet how many did not reach their intended destination or why not.
John Gideon of VotersUnite.org (and a frequent contributor to The BRAD BLOG) brought the article to our attention. He also noted: “DC does not have early voting yet they are allowing voters to vote early because they have no idea if absentee ballots will be delivered. And the unasked and answered question in this article; what about the military and overseas voters? Did they get their ballots? Will they be able to vote?” Good questions.
And speaking of problems with the lack of early voting… Los Angeles, the largest voting jurisdiction in the country, larger than 41 states combined — and where we happen to live — has a single early voting location at the county’s election headquarters. The drive, if L.A. traffic plays along (and it rarely does), from The BRAD BLOG World News Headquarters is about 40 minutes from here.
That’s an absolute scandal, frankly. In previous elections there had been a dozen or so locations around the county for early voting. LA County Clerk and Recorder Dean Logan explained via email (posted below in full), after we’d forwarded an email from a voter troubled about it (also posted below), that the reason is due to CA SoS Debra Bowen’s requirement that the county’s Diebold touch-screen voting machines, previously used for early voting, must have their so-called “paper trails” 100% hand-counted, following severe security and accuracy issues discovered during her landmark “Top-to-Bottom Review” of the state’s voting systems.
Though we appreciate Logan’s thorough and quick response, his reasoning, frankly, is pretty weak, in our estimation, even if he wasn’t responsible for selecting this system. That was done by former Registrar, Conny “Diebold Cover Girl” McCormack, who suddenly resigned in January, just one month before Super Tuesday.
But if Florida, of all places, can serve every one its voters by easing the expected historic turnout on Nov. 4th with early voting across the state — albeit with several problems, largely due to failures in the state’s e-registration computers and Republican insistence that voting hours be cut back — so can Los Angeles. Next Tuesday will be a nightmare out here.
The email from the concerned Los Angeles voter, and Logan’s full email in response, follow below…
Sent: Wednesday, October 22, 2008 2:00 PM
Subject: Los Angeles County early Voting problem
Los Angeles County has *only one* early voting location for the entire county; the county is over 4000 square miles and has a population of over 9,948,000. I would have to drive at least 37 miles to vote early. When I called the registrar’s office. I was told that there was nothing to be done about it.
This is not right and constitues a veiled form of voter suppression. Too much is at stake in this election. I do not know where to turn. I have called the CNN voter’s hotline, the LA League of Women’s Voters, and Election Protection, so far no one has anything constructive to offer as far as action to increase early voting locations in LA county. I sure hope you can help or at least bring it to the public’s attention.
Susan [redacted]
Los Angeles County
91344
After sending the above to Logan, he replied the next day with the following…
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2008 12:15 PM
To: Brad Friedman
Subject: Re: [Fwd: fw: Los Angeles County early Voting problem]
Brad —
Thanks for the question and the opportunity to respond. I responded to a similar question from LAist last night.
Los Angeles County operated a successful early voting program in the past; however it was dependent on the use of touch screen voting technology. Following the Secretary of State’s top-to-bottom review of voting systems and the subsequent conditional approval of voting systems, the early voting system used in Los Angeles required a 100% manual count of all ballots cast on touch screen devices. Based on the size of our jurisdiction and the number of measures and contests on the ballot, it is simply not practical or logistically feasible to do that in a large scale, high volume election such as the one we are conducting now. As a result, we discontinued the program.
We were very clear about this during the review of voting systems — with the Board of Supervisors, the Secretary of State and the election protection community. Collectively, I believe we all recognized the trade-off associated with the need for the conditions of use applied to the touch screen voting system(s).
With our paper-based, central count Optical Scan voting system, it is also not feasible to issue ballots at remote locations. For this election, we have over 700 different ballot styles. The ballot security, accountability and inventory control issues with this kind of volume and its associated variables would be significant and a drain on resources needed to ensure secure, transparent processes inherent to administering elections in Los Angeles County. I believe many other California counties have faced a similar reality with regard to early voting.
We have emphasized options for vote by mail voting — including an on-line application and tracking system on our web site at www.lavote.net. Additionally, we have expanded hours and access at our Norwalk headquarters for those who need or choose to vote prior to election day. In fact, we are will be open every day through election day for this purpose.
Please be assured that an early voting component will be a consideration in any future discussions or plans with regard to voting systems in Los Angeles County.
I hope this information is helpful.
Best regards,
— Dean
DEAN C. LOGAN
Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk
Los Angeles County
www.lavote.net
Not to compare apples and oranges, but Cleveland has about 1,000,000 voters and they only have one early voting location (and it is horrible in terms of parking). Columbus has 800,000 voters and only one early voting site.
But I feel better about LA because at least they have ballot integrity concerns. All over Ohio, they have ballot on demand printers printing out thousands of different ballot styles and almost no inventory control.
But clearly for very little cost LA could have rented three or four locations and taken a pile of ballots or used ballot-on-demand at these locations.
Oh, elections officials, why must you taunt us so. Zero accountability and zero repercussions for your ineptitudes or violations of federal and state election laws.
Just watching the Maddow show and she talked to Obama staffers about the various problems with early voting, voter suppression etc and she stated that they were right on top of it, knew about every story she related and had an explanation for why it wasn’t as bad as it may appear, which seemed to surprise her, but she said she was left with the impression that they were absolutely aware of exactly what was going on around the country.
WTF? Nov 5th is too late for action. But if McCain has to pack small rallies with a majority of bussed in students maybe the Obama people are just know what they’re doing. IF McCain won by a margin as narrow as Bush did in either (stolen) election, Obama’s people should have their pick of which battle to fight and win decisively. That’s still a terrible political position to be in though: no ‘mandate’, no change. I’m just stuck on ‘WTF?’ these days, my own cynical conspiracy theories aside.
I’m bummed, here in Missouri we have no early voting. The 4th is going to be a horror.
Madison, WI has one early voting place. I just voted and only had to wait two hours.
Brad – A Voting machine has been confiscated for registering wrong votes
http://coloradoindependent.com/13187/adams-county-quarantines-machine-that-switched-candidates-vote
What would be the best place to report disenfranchisement issues? I.E. not on registered voter list, not the right kind of ID, not a match, challenged at the polls, couldn’t wait in line that long, breakdown of equipment and no chance to cast your vote, etc etc. It would be amazing to get a count of sorts for these issues. Is there a separate web site for logging in these types of things?
the DOJ’s schedule for monitoring on Election Day is up at Wash Post; either they will do the right thing, as the law will require, or they will do what they did in 2000 and 2004, which is nothing:
Justice Dept. Will Send 800 Monitors to Polls
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/10/30/justice_dept_will_send_800_mon.html#more
Dean Logan, evm shill.
I’ll just quote from a comment I posted earlier in another thread:
Metaphorically speaking what Dean and the other shills are trying to say is that we’ll have to pry the evm vendors’ cocks from the shills’ cold politically-neutralized asses.
And while I believe Obama’s apparent decision to attempt to override the electoral gaming with sheer numbers is a badly flawed strategy… we really do have to make sure to vote this year of all years…
We’ll have to nuke them at the polls November 4th. It’s the only way to sure.
Afterwards we’ll have to deal with Dean’s evm addiction via a cold turkey treatment.
GEORGIA
My Experience Early Voting in Fulton Co., GA – on the Vanilla Side of Town 10-30-2008
First of all, let me say that heretofore when voting at my usual precinct I have never seen more than 10-15 people at the polls when voting. It’s usually just 5 [tops] and occasionally, just lonesome me. But tonight was a totally different experience.
Fulton County has 6 locations for Early Voting from 8:30 a.m. – 7:00 p.m. I vote on the North side of town. I got to my Early Voting location at 6:10 p.m. The line was very long – possibly 1/8 mile – outside the building. I entered the building around 7:00 p.m. and saw that people were queued into 6 or 7 packed lines. I finished voting at 9:20 p.m. There were about 10 voting machines at this site. I asked a worker how many people came through yesterday and she quoted a figure close to 3,000. Unbelieveable!!! And there was [finally] a racially mixed group of people in line with me tonight, but still a bit heavy on the vanilla.
During the long wait I had a chance to talk to people around me about the dreadful machines. I was pretty amazed that they all were aware of problems with the machines and agreed 100% we need to trash them.
My county had about 10 screens to muddle through to choose all the candidates and vote on 3 amendments to the state constitution. It would have been horrible if I had not done my homework in advance and knew what those amendments meant underneath the legalese. It took me about 6 or 7 minutes to cast my vote even so. Plus, I was double/triple checking to make sure the machine didn’t overtly flip my choices. It didn’t. Who knows what happens to my vote now. 🙁 🙁 🙁
Crossing my fingers we’re NUKING them at the polls.
Yet again, Dean Logan is worse than wrong.
Just one early voting location is indeed a subtle form of vote suppression.
What about inactive voters? What about provisional voting?
Inactive voters, people believed to have moved, do not receive mail ballots, but are still eligible to vote.
Where are they supposed to vote?
King County Washington has roughly 1.2m registered voters. Should the county ultimately adopt “vote by mail”, King County Elections projects that 40,000 voters will use the new regional voting centers (the new poll sites).
Further, King County will issue 10,000s of provisional ballots for this upcoming general election.
Doesn’t “scandal” imply that there’s some insidious operation at work here? Some evildoer trying to disenfranchise people for his own nefarious gains?
There is no chance in HELL that either DC or California’s electoral votes will go to anyone but Obama. DC votes 90% democrat. California isn’t far behind. Why on earth would anyone intentionally try to disenfranchise someone in these places? It just doesn’t matter.
Seriously. This is not a scandal, and the outcome of the presidential election will can in no way be affected in DC or California. It’s just run of the mill incompetence of the sort we see all the time (especially here in DC).
I’m not saying it’s a good thing, but save your cries of “scandal” for Ohio, Florida and Virginia where it actually matters… and the slimeballs are certainly already at work as they were 8 years ago.
I’m a DC absentee voter who lives overseas. Because my absentee ballot had not arrived by last week, I used the Federal Absentee Write in Ballot to send my vote in well before the deadline last week – being DC, the write-in ballot has all the same options as the regular ballot, because there is only a federal election on Nov. 4.
In true DC fashion (i.e. total incompetence), my absentee ballot arrived TODAY (it is 10:30 am on Nov. 4 here in China). I had a good laugh at it, but overseas voters should always be aware of their options for write-in ballots and NOT count on city officials – especially DC officials – to do anything right.