s skippy the bush kangaroo: who needs to vote anyway?

skippy the bush kangaroo



Wednesday, February 06, 2008

who needs to vote anyway?

we're not ones to encourage obama supporters to continually cry "foul!" which they are wont to do.

but we ourselves noticed an irregularity w/voting here in socal, which the bradblog brings to light:


alright, we've got a bona fide mess here in los angeles county. we covered this a bit earlier tonight, but have been speaking with various precinct captains and trying to figure out exactly what's going on. as mentioned it's a confusing mess, and could indeed be shaping up as "california's butterfly ballot" as far as we can tell.

there are two main problems:

1. many voters who thought they were registering as non-partisan independents have been surprised to learn they registered instead as members of the "american independent" party, and thus, were not allowed to vote in the open democratic primary.

2. more insidiously, those independent non-partisan voters who did successfully manage to get registered as "decline to state" (or dts, or non-partisan), were allowed to vote in the democratic presidential primary if they requested to do so when voting. however, without filling in a certain bubble on the ballot, specifying they wanted it to be counted in the dem primary, their vote for president, according to la county's registrar of voters, will not be counted.

…for now then, our friend jake soboroff at why tuesday has a video interview, posted below, with la city attorney, rocky delgadillo who is also expressing concerns about what is becoming known as the "double bubble trouble" issue. as well, delgadillo gives a full statement to cbs2 news, calling for review of the issue, which could well disenfranchise hundreds of thousands of voters, by ca sos debra bowen and la county's acting registrar of voters dean logan…

first, soboroff describes the confusing situation very well...

here’s the trouble: in the voting booth, voters must then mark a bubble on the ballot that confirms the voter is indeed voting on a democratic ballot. if they fail to mark, their ballots go uncounted. and further, if a voter neglects to fill in this bubble, a voting machine will not return the ballot because the vote is counted as an under-vote. in los angeles county alone, 776,000 voters are susceptible to double bubble trouble.
needless to say, many decline-to-state voters were confused. after all, by requesting the ballot in the first place, voters are already in essence filling out this bubble. the san francisco chronicle reports that poll workers have also been uninformed. decline-to-state voters were denied the right to participate within the democratic primary, and were given non-partisan ballots.

20% of californians consider themselves, and are registered as, decline-to-state voters, yet in this historical nomination process their voice is jeopardized by baffling ballot rules and puzzled poll workers.
skippy himself noticed the strange extra bubble that needed to be filled in. yet nobody at the polling place bothered to tell skippy that, as a non-partisan voter w/a democratic ballot, he had to mark that bubble in order for his vote to count.

to be frank, skippy was puzzled for a minute. he's not a registered democrat, so why should he mark "democrat" on his ballot, since it already was a democratic ballot?

finally, instinct told him to mark it; he did, and thank goodness; now his vote will be counted.

but it does seem like an unnecessary and very confusing step designed mainly to disenfranchise people.

in, in california, the majority of independents who request democratic ballots were those who wanted to vote for obama.

we're not crying voter fraud. we'll leave that to bradblog. but it does give one pause.

erratum: we received an email from bradblog:

a) we don't cry "voter" fraud. the voters are doing fine. please lease them alone.
b) we investigate, discuss and report on potential election fraud issues and failures.
c) we don't "cry" anything. we investigate and report.

just thought i'd mention that :)
we apologize, bradblog! it was, after all, just a joke! we are sorry if we offended you, as we have often said (and in your presence, too) that your blog is one of the few doing actual work in blogtopia, and yes, we coined that phrase!

please forgive us for our comedic turn of phrase! we should have said, "we're not accusing anyone of potential election fraud issues and failures, we'll leave the investigating, discussing and reporting to bradblog!"

now, pardon us while we go cry.

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posted by skippy at 11:50 AM |

3 Comments:

I'm also a "DTS" in California, yet I am in San Luis Obispo county. At my polling place they asked which party and I said "Democratic" and they gave me a Dem ballot. There was no place to mark DEMOCRAT like you had in LA county. We use optical scanners instead of punch ballots here. I just wanted to point out that many outside of LA didn't have the problem you did.

Oh, and anyone in California who registered as American Independent should only blame themselves. I know it's a bit confusing, but on the registration card there are clearly the parties listed (Amer Ind being one of them) and then DECLINE TO STATE as the last choice. Its not the fault of the County Clerks that there actually is a party called the American Independent Party.
commented by Anonymous Anonymous, 4:53 PM PST  
I'm so glad SD county is not this stupid.

The LA County registrar ought to be ashamed and removed from office for this stunt.
commented by Anonymous donna, 10:53 PM PST  
in the voting booth, voters must then mark a bubble on the ballot that confirms the voter is indeed voting on a democratic ballot

This happened in the 2006 primary here in WA state, the Sec'y of State's office said they would fix it, and yet we're already hearing that once again there is a party bubble on each ballot that voters are overlooking - and their ballots won't count for anything but local races.

Ah, democracy...
commented by Blogger slim, 11:34 AM PST  

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