Yesterday, California’s Republican-supported Prop 14 — which voters approved last June, changing the state’s separate party primary system to a single primary for all candidates, with the top two vote-getters going on to a run-off election if none receives more than 50% of the vote — had its first official try-out in the Special Election to replace the resigning Blue Dog Democrat and unrepentant war supporter Rep. Jane Harman in the state’s 36th Congressional District.
While similarly “Blue Dog” Democratic candidate and L.A. City Councilwoman Janice Hahn was in the lead last night as results were reported throughout the evening, it was the battle for second place, and therefore the right to participate in the run-off, that presented a real late-night nail-biter twist as unofficial precinct results were completed in the wee hours.
With Democratic CA Sec. of State Debra Bowen running second and seemingly headed for the run-off with Hahn for most of the night, according to L.A. County’s running totals, the final unverified results inched self-financed Republican Craig Huey into the second place spot by just 206 votes at evening’s end, after all 261 precincts in the very Democratic-leaning CA-36 were tallied.
With nearly 10,000 mail-in, provisional and other votes still to be tallied on the county’s optical-scan system, however — a system which was decertified and then conditionally re-certified, in part, by Bowen herself in 2008 — the result of the cliff-hanger is likely to ensure “busy days ahead” at the L.A. County Registrar Recorder/County Clerk’s office as Dean Logan, L.A. County’s Registrar Recorder/County Clerk, noted last night on his personal Twitter account…
Logan pegged the “Initial ESTIMATE of remaining ballots” still to be counted at “9,811 (8,416 vote by mail; 1,269 provisionals; 126 damaged)” via his official L.A. County Twitter account late last night.
Here are the “Semi-Final Official Election Returns” of the 16-person race, with all precincts tallied, as published by the County last night, before those “remaining ballots” are tabulated today and in the days ahead…
One Twitterer who is hopefully better at math than I am, extrapolated: “If you apply the initial [Vote-by-Mail percentages] to the # of VBM ballots left, then Bowen picks up a net 262 votes on Huey, who’s lead is 206.”
That’s a mighty close shave, no matter how it is sliced.
Some progressive critics, such as Firedoglake legal analyst “bmaz”, have already lashed out at the unabashedly progressive, anti-war Democratic candidate Marcy Winograd, seeing her as “Nader-like spoiler” in the race, splitting the progressive vote between herself and Bowen. As they see it, Winograd’s run may have allowed Huey to come in second, leaving Democrats left with only the less-than-progressive (and sometimes downright-Republican-like dirty-fighter) Hahn. Others, like progressive activist and impossibly-well-informed Down With Tyranny’s Howie Klein note, however, that “Marcy had every right to run & her campaign did a great service to the district.”
Huey’s impressive showing is being attributed, in no small part, to $500,000 of his own fortune from his direct marketing business, used to buy his way into the election.
Winograd, who has run long-odds campaigns to unseat Harman in primary elections twice in the past, posted this last night on Twitter: “Thank you loyal supporters & volunteers. With 9,000 ballots to be counted, it could be Hahn vs. Huey or Hahn vs. Bowen. Defeat Huey!”
[Editorial note: For my part, I believe candidates should run when they have important ideas to bring to an election, which is the case with Winograd. And, by way of full disclosure, Bowen remains the only candidate ever officially endorsed by The BRAD BLOG during her first run for CA Sec. of State in 2006. We did not make any endorsements during her 2010 run for the same office and, though we have been supportive of Winograd in her races against Republican-friendly Harman in the past, we have stayed out of the CA-36 primary entirely.]Los Angeles County uses the ES&S InkaVote Plus paper ballot optical-scan system to record votes, and the L.A. County-designed Micro-computer Tally System (MTS) to tally and compile results.
An analysis of the ES&S InkaVote Plus, commissioned by Bowen herself in 2007, found [PDF] “serious design flaws that have led directly to specific vulnerabilities, which attackers could exploit to affect elections outcomes.”
“The expert reviewers demonstrated that the physical and technological security mechanisms provided by the vendor for the InkaVote Plus…System were inadquate to ensure accuracy and integrity of the election results and of the systems that provide those results,” reads Bowen’s decertification and conditional recertification [PDF] of the system, as signed in early 2008 following her “Top-to-Bottom Review” (TTBR) of all electronic voting systems in the state.
Due, in no small part, to the vulnerabilities of the InkaVote System, as Logan explained to me today, “One of the conditions placed on the InkaVote Plus system when it was re-approved by the Secretary of State specifies the use of the system as a means of recording votes and not for vote tabulation.”
Tabulation of the votes is, therefore, carried out on the county’s MTS system instead. That system, after a separate study, was subject to “additional conditions” [PDF] imposed by Bowen in 2008, “in order to safeguard and enhance the security, accuracy, and reliability” of the systems.
The InkaVote Plus system was not included in the initial landmark TTBR because ES&S blatantly refused to supply source code for the system, as they are legally obligated to do, for the first-of-its-kind, independent review by world-class computer scientists and security experts. Ultimately, discrepancies were reportedly found between the source code versions the company submitted to the Sec. of State and the copies they were required to leave in escrow with the state.
Unrelated to L.A. County’s systems specifically, but related to the reliability of ES&S, the largest e-voting vendor in the nation, in 2007 the state sued ES&S for $15 million after Bowen’s office discovered the company had illegally used uncertified voting systems in a number of counties.
Her eventual “conditional recertification” of the InkaVote Plus system in 2008 mandated a series of security procedures in order to help offset the system’s many defects. County Clerk Logan has been working on finding a replacement for the oft-failed InkaVote Plus system, a source of many problems in past elections.
[See the extraordinary “Double Bubble” failure in the 2008 Super Tuesday Presidential Primary where some 12,000 votes ultimately went untallied — a problem now largely mitigated by the new Prop 14 primary structure — as well as my own personal experience with L.A. County’s electronic audio balloting system mis-printing 4 out of 12 of my own votes during the state primary in June of 2008, and then failing completely to record my vote at all during the 2010 primary, a problem chalked up by Logan’s post-election analysis to “human error” and “design weakness” in the InkaVote Plus system.]The defects of the ES&S InkaVote Plus and MTS system, and the mandated security procedures meant to offset them, are likely to be under close scrutiny as observers in the CA-36 primary (including the Secretary of State herself) attempt to oversee the tabulation of the remaining 10,000 ballots and the state’s mandatory 1% post-election manual tally and general canvassing of yesterday’s election.
While paper ballots are, by and large, hand-marked at the precincts or via absentee ballot in Los Angeles County — the largest voting jurisdiction in the nation, by far — Election Day ballots are then sent back to county election headquarters in Norwalk to be tabulated centrally on Election Night. The system (with some flaws we won’t go into here for now) is ultimately only as reliable as the electronic optical-scanners, central tabulation computers, and chain of custody for the ballots may be.
Logan says the county is “currently scheduled to complete the canvass on Friday,” and told me last night that the 1% manual tally was set to begin this morning at 10:15am in Norwalk.
Though California law requires a 1% manual tally of paper ballots, there is little guidance in the election code as to what do when that tally is found to be different from the optical-scan tally. Past discrepancies have been ignored by the county, according to some observers and Election Integrity advocates.
More details on the 1% tally, the schedule for the canvass, and other observation procedures for the May 17th CA-36 primary are available on the LA County Registrar’s website here.
In the meantime, citing the “9811 ballots not yet processed,” late last night on her own Twitter feed, candidate Bowen rallied supporters by announcing there were “more than enough to make up 206 vote diff & make the run-off. Let’s GO!!!”
CLARIFICATION: Several points regarding L.A. County’s election system have been corrected or clarified in this article since its original publication, as based on helpful input from Registrar Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan. Also, the graphic used originally for the “Semi-official election returns” was from earlier in the evening yesterday. We’ve replaced that with the correct one, showing Craig in second place, followed by Bowen et al.
UPDATE 5/19/11, 3:01pm PT: As of this afternoon, Huey’s lead over Bowen has increased from 206 votes to 750, as per the LA County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk website. The initial tally of all remaining ballots should be completed by mid-afternoon on Friday. Here’s where things reportedly stand at this hour…
UPDATE 5/20/11: Bowen concedes with a statement on her campaign website posted last night, prior to today’s tally of the “roughly 200…damaged and handful of final validated provisional ballots”, according to L.A. County Clerk/Registrar Dean Logan…
…
“Since Tuesday’s election, my staff, legal advisors and election experts participated in the ballot review process to ensure a full and fair vote count was conducted. It is clear now that I will not be in the runoff and I congratulate Janice Hahn and Craig Huey.
“I also want to commend the excellent job by Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters Dean Logan and the entire team at the Registrar’s office in handling the final count so quickly, and for conducting this election so professionally, as is their standard.
“Voters in Congressional District 36 have a very important decision to make on July 12, and I encourage citizens to have their voices heard by voting in the runoff.
“As Secretary of State, I have always implemented a strict policy of not endorsing candidates to avoid even a perception of conflict, and I will continue that policy.”
Logan says via Twitter at 12:27pm PT today:
Bowen closed yesterday’s 750 gap to 704 in today’s “final” tally…
On what basis do you consider Janice Hahn a “Blue Dog” or “Republican-like?” She is one of the most left-leaning members of the lefty LA City Council, and is the near-unanimous choice of organized labor. Marcy is surely more left than Bowen or Hahn, but Bowen arguably considerably more moderare than Hahn.
Brad Friedman wrote: “California’s Republican-supported Prop 14…”
Huh?
What is your source for the claim that the Republicans supported Prop 14?
Here ya go, Parke:
Supporters included the California Chamber of Commerce and Republican Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. Critics included the ACLU.
Park Bostrom @ 2 asked:
For a start, as noted via sources linked on WikiPedia, supporters of Prop 14 included then Republican Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, then Republican Lt. Gov. Abel Moldonado, Republican gubernatorial candidate Tom Campbell, as well as this from the Los Angeles Business Journal:
Collins @ 1 asked:
Well, for a start, on the basis of the article posted on her own Janice Hahn for Congress website which reads:
Need more? Cause I’ll post it if you really want me to (which I don’t think you actually do — but I’m willing!)
Yeah, I think we do need more than someone else said it in their column (which also said it remains to be seen whether Bowen or Hahn will run as the moderate) and the column got posted on her website. Marcy was my candidate and Bowen my fallback choice but I don’t see much ground to call the labor-friendly Janice Hahn a Blue Dog — Harman’s blessing doesn’t overide Hahn’s record.
Hey Brad – I tried emailing you but my message got bounced. Oh well. Here is what I had in mind:
“Editorial note: For my part, I believe candidates should run when they have important ideas to bring to an election, which is the case with Winograd. And, by way of full disclosure, Bowen remains the only candidate ever officially endorsed by The BRAD BLOG during her first run for CA Sec. of State in 2006. We did not make any endorsements during her 2006 run for the same office and, though we have been supportive of Winograd in her races against Republican-friendly Harman in the past, we have stayed out of the CA-36 primary entirely.]”
My question was: shouldn’t that second “2006: be “2008” or something?
I hope all’s well with you folks!
“a system which was decertified and then conditionally re-certified, in part, by Bowen herself in 2008”
Another ironic faith election.
1. sorry, as a 99’er, i can’t spare the shekels for your excellent work; funny you can’t get any rich konservatives who *actually* believe in free and fair elections to sponsor your sorely needed watchdoggery (woof, i just neologized… and again!)…
funny, that… you’d think ‘freedom loving’ (*cough*cough*) koch bros, constitution-revering (*cough*cough*) coors family, or other kapitalist piggy defenders of our freedoms, would want to ensure our bedrock basis for small-dee democracy -voting- is on the up and up…
gee, wonder why they are so concerned with nearly non-existent ‘voter fraud’, but don’t give a fig about REAL election fraud…
hmmm, wonder why that is…
(furiously connecting dots…)
oh shit…
2. i’m sorry to be so obtuse, but i don’t understand the ‘principle’ upon which:
A. states/etc have ‘open’ primaries where non-party voters get to vote in an opposing parties primaries… WTF ?
isn’t the Whole Point of PARTY primaries, is that THAT PARTY gets to vote on THEIR CANDIDATE ?
really, i don’t understand the ‘principle’ on which this is based, and it appears to ONLY allow for mischief by non-party parties…
B. similarly, the idea of ‘primaries’ where party affiliation doesn’t matter, seems pointless… it only seems to guarantee there will ALWAYS be one -or more?- runoffs… otherwise, you have party-aligned primaries, you select the 2+ candidates from each eligible party (which is a problem in itself), and have the main election… you *may*, or *may not* have a runoff after that, but it appears you will almost certainly have one under the non-party aligned primaries…
again, color me obtuse…
if you tell me these are simply tactics used to undermine third party candidates, etc; then that makes (perverted) sense…
3. about tired of the LOTE, and ‘practical votes only count’ AUTHORITARIAN krowd… (and if you don’t know me, ‘authoritarian’ is about the worst insult i can think of calling someone)
my vote is MINE ! ! !
i don’t ‘owe’ it to who YOU THINK is ‘electable’ or ‘practical’; and MOST ESPECIALLY NOT to the two-faced korporate money borg’s approved candidates…
ps as much as i despise those retarded ‘captcha’ thingies, at least yours is tuned to a reasonable level of difficulty… some are so munged up, i have to click through 4-5 to get one i can read… i bet the bots do better at it than humans…
*sheesh* vat a vorld…
art guerrilla
aka ann archy
eof
Received this from Mark Crispin Miller.
Peace,
Sark
How much radiation’s hitting North America from Fukushima? Quite a lot, apparently…
link: http://wp.me/pkFiL-7sE
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=haMePBnkJhY
Apologies, the above was to go to another story at BradBlog.
Peace,
Sark
If you are going to have a crazy open primary system like this, how could it be structured so that progressive candidates like Winograd can run without the risk of being vote-splitting “spoilers”?
The answer would be “instant run-off voting”, where voters could mark their 2nd and 3rd choices, and if their first choice gets too few votes, their vote transfers* over to their 2nd choice (e.g. Bowen). (*This transfer is why this is also called “single transferable vote”.)
Voters should have the freedom to express their actual preferences without having to predict the behavior of other voters (the spoiler effect).
Unfortunately, Brad Blog is absolutely opposed to this type of system. It’s one of the few disagreements I have with you. (I accept there are practical difficulties, as with every voting system, but in principle this is a much better system than what CA is now engaged in.)
Randy D, you may like to look at how IRV played out in NC. It may not change your mind but the information is important.
Peace,
Sark
http://irvbad4nc.blogspot.com/2010/12/ncarolinas-statewide-instant-runoff.html
http://www.ncvoter.net/irv.html
I believe the parting of the ways with Bowen and Winograd is with unquestioning support for Israel. Winograd is willing to speak out regarding the crimes being committed against Palestians. She belongs to Jewish Voice for Peace. Unfortunately Bowen and Hahn signed the “pledge” to support Israel…no matter what.
Frankley…I would think it should be unlawful for U.S. elected officials to be pledging support for any foreign country.
Brilliant, Diane. Outlaw treaties. No, that’s too extreme. Just outlaw treaties with Israel.
John Seeley @ 6 said:
Well, it didn’t get posted. The Hahn campaign posted it themselves. I wouldn’t even post something here where somebody said something inaccurate about me (at least without comment in regard to it), much less on my official campaign website.
It should also be noted that Hahn was Harman’s personal pick as well, having notified her by phone about her intentions before she told the public, and allowing her to have her campaign website up within hours of Harman’s announcement. Hahn was also Harman’s guest at the State of the Union speech.
Anonymous @ 15 said:
Um, “Anonymous”, I’m pretty sure what Bowen and Hahn signed were not treaties, and I’m also pretty sure that treaties are not signed by elected officials, other than the President, in any case.
But, other than that, great anonymous, knee-jerk over-reaction to Diane’s comment!
To clarify… I am not talking about international treaties… I am talking about accepting bribes ($$$) from representatives of foreign countries in exchange for turning a blind eye to crimes their governments may have committed..
http://whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ussliberty.html
http://www.ifamericansknew.org/
Marcy Winograd would not have entered the race if the Democratic candidates had shared her views toward the Middle East…pledge or no pledge..
Jewish Voice for Peace Response to Obama’s Speech on the Middle East

May 19, 2011
Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) was disappointed by President Obama’s speech today. While President Obama did speak for the first time of a two-state solution based on the 1967 borders, he did not break new ground in his overall approach to the conflict. His speech did not reflect the reality on the ground and further showed a breathtaking hypocrisy by omission.
When President Obama says, “The United States opposes the use of violence and repression against the people of the region,” we ask, “Will you hold Israel accountable for its violence against Palestinians, both in daily life under occupation and in Israel’s brutal response to nonviolent Palestinian protest, like in Nabi Saleh and Bil’in?”


President Obama seems to recognize that the Palestinians are “suffering the humiliation of occupation,” but he blatantly ignores the tyranny and violence of over four decades of control, land confiscation and worse. Further, he offered not one concrete step towards ending the occupation, an absence made all the more grotesque because Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu chose to headline today with plans to expand illegal and immoral Jewish settlements in East Jerusalem.
Moreover, Prime Minister Netanyahu responded to President Obama’s speech with an immediate rejection of the 1967 borders as the basis for negotiation, with one of the leading American Jewish organizations – whose leader was named by Newsweek as the most influential rabbi in America – calling the 1967 borders “Auschwitz borders.â€
In the face of such intransigence, we need President Obama to match his words with action. We need him to make a commitment to human rights and democracy for all of the Middle East, including all the people of Israel and Palestine.
For further comment, contact Rebecca AT jewishvoiceforpeace.org
Approval Voting would work very well with the Top-Two Primary. Those who wanted to vote for both Marcy Winograd and Debra Bowen could have done so, and then maybe Debra Bowen would have come out one of the top two for the runoff.
Approval Voting involves voting for as many as you like, and whoever gets the most votes wins (or in this case, whichever top two get the most votes go to the general election). Simple to vote, simple to tally. No weird cliffhangers like the Oakland Mayor race in 2010.
It’s much easier to audit Approval Voting than IRV anyway. And Approval Voting can be done by hand, or done statewide. It can also be added to the Top-Two Primary System (Prop. 14) by the State Legislature.
Regarding “Republican” support for Prop. 14, while Schwarzenegger and Maldonado supported it, both were fairly moderate Republicans. It is worth noting that, like the ACLU and *every other* political party, the California Republican Party vehemently opposed Prop. 14, as did numerous Republican elected officials and other Republican “hard liners”. The Republican Party feared that Prop 14. would dilute its power.
Also, the Chamber of Commerce is not a Republican organization, last time I checked.
Parke Bostrom @ 21 rejoindered:
“Moderate” or otherwise, they were the two leading Republicans in the state for crying out loud, and loudly pushed Prop 14. Not sure how you can dispute that fact. Moreover, I don’t know if you consider gubernatorial Tom Campbell a “moderate” or not, but it’s somewhat a shame (more than somewhat), that it’s come down to the amount of extremism of one’s ideology in making the distinction of who is a Republican and who isn’t, inside the Republican party.
Fair enough, though I didn’t say “Republican Party-backed”, I said “Republican-backed”, and I think that statement is supportable through the evidence discussed.
Um, which “Chamber of Commerce”? The U.S. Chamber of Commerce? Definitely a Republican organization. The CA Chamber? I can’t speak to that, as I don’t know how closely they are allied with the mafia-like, Rightwing thugs at the U.S. Chamber.