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2Close2Call!
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OK, well, it’s the next morning and it looks like I screwed up the numbers last night–I forgot that the Dems dole out delegates based on percentage of the vote, unlike the Repubs. So, Obama is actually in the lead, but with primaries running until June, it’s still very much in the air. Weeeee!
The above screencap comes from a post from today at BradBlog.com (here: http://www.bradblog.com/ ) that reports:
As we wait for the next round of thousands of disenfranchised voters to emerge from OH, TX, VT, RI or beyond, Los Angeles County has finally finished counting its infamously disastrous "Double Bubble" ballots from the Feb. 5th Super Tuesday Primary in California.The final numbers, in just in time to meet today’s local certification deadline, are supposed to hearten us because the county Registrar’s office chose to only not count some 12,000 valid, legally cast votes in the state’s open Democratic Primary.
See, the ballot was designed so that certain circles were reused for different parties’ candidates. So, in my case, I checked off the circle for Obama, right? If I were to pull that ballot out and slide it into the American Independent ballot "machine" I’d see it already filled in for one of their guys.
(I don’t vote for American Independent party candidates because I’m independent, not American Independent.)
ANYway, so in order for ballot machines to tell the difference between a vote for Obama in the Democrats and a vote for Mr. Nochanceofwinning in the AI party, the machines must check to see which circle I filled in for which party I voted for. Only then does it know whether circle #8 filled in means Mr. Obama or Mr. Icecubeschance.
Yep, for some reason the ballot, with all those damn circles on it (there were easily more than fifty or sixty and too many to really estimate beyond that), they just HAD to make candidates share circles on independent voter ballots.
This is clearly a case of intentionally treating indy voters as 2nd class citizens. If it wasn’t 100% intentional, it was 100% incompetence, then.
Either way, I have no way of knowing if my vote was counted. I could very well be one of those 12,000 people. So, in a sense, there are a lot more than 12,000 of us who have been alienated from the system because not a single indy voter who *may* have missed that first circle can know for sure if their vote was counted.
If you missed it, you can see just why it was so easy to miss that first ballot in a video of me not filling in the circle where I should have here:
http://tv.thepete.com/…feels-like
What’s worse is that vote tallies are all over the place, according to the BradBlog post:
Unfortunately, unlike all the other results from L.A. County , the "supplemental" tallies are posted only by Congressional District, not by precinct, so the specific numbers of ballots which were thrown away wholesale, are impossible to see.
Where the final "supplemental" totals (Clinton 51%, Obama 42%) are reportedly in line-ish with all of the previously reported results for the entire county (Clinton 55%, Obama 41%), various Congressional District results from the "supplemental count" are way of proportion from that.
For example, while some of the CD results are in line with the overall totals, most are proportionally out of whack. Here’s just a few to give you an idea…
29th CD: Clinton 59%, Obama 24%
31th CD: Clinton 68%, Obama 26%
34th CD: Clinton 61%, Obama 31%
35th CD: Clinton 27%, Obama 67%
36th CD: Clinton 62%, Obama 31%Of course, there could be perfectly legitimate reason for such imbalanced numbers, in an otherwise close over-all election. The more likely reason, however, for the imbalance is that Logan chose to simply toss out votes for any candidate listed on the #8 to #10 bubbles in most precincts (if there were any Non-Partisan voters who chose to vote in the American Independent Primary in that precinct, since that party was assigned the same bubbles for their own candidates), while choosing to count the votes for any Democratic candidate who happened to have the good luck of being assigned the #11 to #15 bubble on the ballot.
So, even the numbers representing the ballots that were counted seem to be inconsistent. Lovely system we’ve got here.
I’m glad I’m moving. Of course, New York has had it’s problems too (http://www.bradblog.com/ ).
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Well, it looks like my vote in Tuesday’s primaries won’t count. Watch the video to find out why. If this isn’t typical Politricks, I don’t know what is.
Or, if Flash vids aren’t your thing, read on:
So, THIS is what it feels like to be disenfranchised!! COOL!
As a white man, I thought I’d NEVER get to feel what this was like!
And you know what? It feels pretty lame!
Yep, turns out voting officials (probably just one, Dean Logan) designed the ballot so that us indy-voters in Los Angeles have to check an extra circle to declare which party’s primaries we’re voting in. This is an extra, useless step that is clearly there because someone (again, probably just Dean Logan, LA county’s new acting Registrar of Voters) doesn’t give a crap about us independent voters or actually wants to stop our votes from counting.
Something so minor like this can be easily over looked–especially since it’s obvious which party a voter went with when you look at which candidate they voted for.
That’d be like having to declare your interest in buying a Toyota before you are permitted to buy a Camry. Makes no sense. You can read more about it in the headline’s from today’s Democracy Now here:
www.democracynow.org/2008/2/7/headlines#4
What’s really funny is that I went back and looked at the little voters info booklet/sample ballot they sent me in the mail. It *does* mention that I have to pick one of two circles to fill in–but it doesn’t tell me where to find those two circles! I didn’t see them on the ballot card I was handed, nor did I notice them on the ballot-framey-thing where I actually did my voting.
But back to the sample ballot they sent me in the mail–so if it was on the ballot, you’d think it would be there. In fact, in previous elections, I’ve filled out the sample ballot and then used it as a guide when I actually do my voting. However, this time, I couldn’t do this because the first four pages of the sample ballot they sent me were BLANK! In fact, if you go back to the video I shot of me actually voting, you can not only see my hand glide RIGHT over the “Democratic” circle, but you can also see that there was only one circle to fill in at all–one for the Democrats. So, a useless choice compounded by the fact that I couldn’t have inked in the other choice if I had wanted to!
Granted, I’m an idiot who was just caught up in the moment (I really was excited to vote) and I should have been more thorough as I voted, but why do I have to declare which party’s primaries I’m voting in? I have a feeling that the other circle was missing because I was using the “Democratic” booth and not an American Independent booth. However, if it was a special ballot to begin with, why didn’t it just come auto-checked? Hell, truth be told, I blew past the presidential primaries page on the ballot-framey-thing because a bunch of those pages were blank, too.
However, I can tell you *for sure* that if the sample ballot they sent me had been complete, I’d never have missed that stupid circle. Like I said, I use that as a guide.
I’m not the only person in LA who had trouble voting, either. Sean Carroll at the Cosmic Variance blog had bigger problems than I did:
cosmicvariance.com/2008/02/05/chaos-at-the-polling-station/
My sister-in-law, Lisa (OnLisaReinsRadar.com), IMed me last night saying she got stuck with a provisional ballot. This was the same thing that happened to Sean at Cosmic Variance. What this means, as I understand it, is that their votes will only be counted if there is a recount.
It’s hard to not be sarcastic… soooo hard!
The previous post on BradBlog before the one I just linked to talks more specifics: "Voting machine malfunctions were wide-spread as were electronic poll book failures. This evening and tomorrow will bring us many more reports of problems as counties get polls closed and begin to tabulate the votes. Please note that our information comes from media reports and not anecdotal reports from voters."
So, check out that post if you want to see links to their sources (there are a LOT):
Personally? I had no problem at all voting. Wellll, that’s not *entirely* true. I had initially wanted to vote for a Green party candidate, but they said I couldn’t. I wanted to vote for Cynthia McKinney who is a former Democratic Congresswoman who is now running against Nader for the Green nom. She’s as good a person as Nader, but in different ways.
I’m not sure if I have to be registered Green (I’m an independent) or not, but they said I could vote Democrat or American Independent. I just hit the CAGreens.com site and could find nothing specific about whether their primary was open or not (I should have asked at the polling place).
Actually, looking at their website I can totally see why those guys are never going to get anywhere. Terrible design (too cluttered!) and I couldn’t find the info I was looking for. Not good when the info is an answer to the question: "Can I vote for you guys?"
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After all of that today, the Dems are up in the air and odds are McCain will get the Republinom, but both were expected, so…whoopdie-shit.
…aaaand we’re back! Our votes have been registered. Let’s hope they’re counted.
GOING TO VOTE RIGHT NOW!! WAHOO!!!
I’ve just deleted Twitter Tools from my server. If this Tweet shows up on ThePete.Com something is seriously wrong.
@rodfather.com I’m familiar with twitterfeed.com-thanks! I’m using TwitterTools for WP to get my posts on Twitter, but it updates with edits
MSNBCTV "projecting" a bunch of "winners" but supposedly none of them are surprises.
Check it out: The BRAD BLOG : Voters Face Long Lines in Georgia as Photo ID Laws and Diebold’s .. snipr.com/1z2ap
Wow–ABC News just advertised on MSNBCTV about covering the primaries with Facebook.com. Not a selling point, IMHO. I *hate* Facebook.com
It’s the 4pm update! Some interesting news from BlackBoxVoting.org, Bradblog.com and more. Plus the rest of the world is following the primaries today just as much as we are. Seems like maybe they might be concerned at the outcome. Go figure!
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BradBlog: "Voters Face Long Lines in Georgia as Photo ID Laws and Diebold’s Crashing E-Pollbook System Slow Process" snurl.com/1z2ap
Olbermann just pointed out how the rest of the world is following the primaries as a major story. This is how powerful the USA is. Scary.
Has Keith Olbermann has gained weight? All those ad money he’s gotten bagging on Bush seems to have fed him well.
IT’S OFFICIAL: I’m SICK of the background music MSNBCTV has been using ALL DAY. The bumper music sounds like 16-bit video game music. Bleh!
MSNBCTV SEZ: More people think the economy is more important than the war in Iraq. I’m one of those guys.
75% of American Ex-Pats in Indonesia are voting for Obama. Thanks for that INTRIGUING NEWS, Chris Matthews! YOU ARE SO SMART!
