For many decline-to-state voters in Los Angeles County in the Feb. 5 primary, making their voices heard was not as easy as they had hoped.
Decline-to-state voters were required to fill in a bubble on the ballots declaring their intent to vote as either an American Independent or a Democrat.
This was not an issue for the Republican Party because it did not allow crossover voting in this election.
But due to the confusing layout of the ballot, many decline-to-state voters did not realize they had to designate their party and fill in the extra bubble, said Rick Jacobs, the chair and founder of Courage Campaign, a group dedicated to working toward progressive politics in California.
Because the optical scanner that counts the votes does not count ballots filled out incorrectly, many votes were left uncounted, Jacobs added.
“It is illegal because the statute says that a vote for an officeholder must be counted,” Jacobs said.
“It doesn’t say that a decline-to-state voter has to go through an extra step.”
Approximately 49,500 decline-to-state ballots expressed a presidential preference but were not counted because voters forgot to fill in the bubble, said Joel Bellman, press deputy for Los Angeles County Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky.
The biggest issue is with Democratic and American Independent candidates who were in overlapping positions on the ballot, said Dean Logan, the acting registrar-recorder for Los Angeles County.
Voters filled in a numbered circle on the ballot to indicate their candidate preference. However, because some of the numbers corresponded to candidates in both the American Independent and Democratic parties, it will be very difficult to determine whom individuals meant to vote for if they did not indicate a party, Logan said.
After seeing a sample ballot, Courage Campaign sent a letter to Logan, informing him of the potentially problematic ballot on the morning of Feb. 4, Jacobs said.
Despite Logan’s efforts to make poll workers aware of the confusing ballot, many voters expressed concern after Feb. 5 that their votes had gone uncounted because they incorrectly completed the ballot, he said.
The same ballot was used in the 2002, 2004 and 2006 primaries, Logan said, but the issue was not brought to public attention in the same manner until this election, perhaps because of the closer race and more key role of nonpartisan voters.
The Los Angeles County registrar is currently working with the secretary of state and the Los Angeles County Council to determine its ability to discover which party voters meant to vote with and recount the votes, Logan said.
“Assuming we get that legal authority, we’re prepared to run the ballots back through and count those votes where we can determine the voter intent,” he added.
Logan also said he is committed to changing the ballot layout before the June election to prevent similar confusion and problems in the future.
At this point, counting the ballots is important for making voters feel confident that their vote will be counted rather than for changing the results of the primary itself, Bellman said.
“We have an absolute interest in making sure that every vote is counted and that the voting tallies are as accurate as humanly possible, but I don’t think anybody (thinks it) is going to change the outcome,” Bellman said.
Jacobs said that because counting the votes will most likely lead to little or no change in the results, he believes reconciling this “bubble-trouble” is more an issue of voter rights and fundamental democracy.
“This was the highest turnout of decline-to-state voters in L.A. County history,” Jacobs said.
If the people who showed up think their vote went uncounted, he added, they’re not going to want to vote again in the future.
“We want people to vote, and we need to make it easy so that everyone wants to,” he said.