The No-Party ballot issue in the LA County

Feb 5th 2008 Presidential Primary Election

  5 Feb 2008 What happened - briefly. html
12 Feb 2008 LA Times Article - Some independent votes won't count in L.A. County. html
13 Feb 2008 PCAB Solution to Count the Votes. doc
14 Feb 2008 Letter from Debra Bowen to LA County Interum ROV Dean Login. pdf
18 Feb 2008 LA Times Article - Ballot design went unnoticed for six years. html

In California, political parties have the option of allowing voters without a party affiliation to participate in their presidential primaries. If you are registered as a No-Party (NP) voter you can decide to vote in the Democratic party primary, if the Democratic party allows it. The same would be true for any other party that invites NP voters to cross-over. All you have to do is ask a poll worker for the correct ballot. A lot of counties will just give you a Democratic or Republican ballot, etc. and send you to the appropriate booth. In LA County you are supposed to get a special ballot and you are supposed to mark a bubble declaring that you are a "cross-over" voter, crossing over from No-Party to Democrat, etc. In the Feb 5th primary, the Democratic and American Independent party allowed cross-over so you would have been given a special ballot for NP voters that were "crossing over" to vote for in the Democratic or the American Independent Party Primary.   As a voter you were required to fill in a bubble at the top (question 6 on the Democratic version - see image) declaring you wanted to be included. If that bubble was not filled in your vote for the Presidential Primary was ignored.

NP voters who wanted to vote in this year' Presidential Primary did not have that vote counted if they did not fill in the bubble. There have been varied estimates as to how many voters that was, maybe 20,000, maybe 100,000.

This situation was created by the LA County registrar of voters improperly designing the ballots.  In the March 2004 primary 44% of NP Cross-Over ballots were not counted. In the June 2006 primary 42% were not counted. The LA County registrar used the same ballot design and procedure in 2008, knowing that it was a very flawed method. Ballots and voting procedure should always default to include the voter's intent, not exclude it.

These ballots can be isolated and counted and the intent of the voter can be implemented. Protect California Ballots has presented the LA County Registrar with a plan on how to do this.

A lot of voters who thought they were "No Party" or "Declined to state" were, in fact, registered as belonging to the American Independent party. That's a related issue that deserves its own address.