Supervisor Janice Hahn initiated the motion calling for a review of the county’s revamped voting system.
“We have to figure out how to fix this and to restore confidence … before November,” Hahn said.
Addressing Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan, Hahn ran through a laundry list of complaints, including electronic poll books that didn’t sync properly, broken voting machines, centers without paper ballot supplies and poorly trained voting center workers putting in 12 to 18 hours of work on election day.
“A lot went wrong,” Hahn said.
Barger, who has supported Logan in the past, co-authored the motion and expressed her disappointment.
“It’s disheartening … because people feel like they’re disenfranchised,” she said.
Thousands of voters during last Tuesday’s election were greeted with extensive lines at various vote centers across Los Angeles County. Some voters were still waiting in line past 11 p.m., more than three hours after the polls had technically closed.
State law requires that people be allowed to vote if they were in line prior to the polls closing.
Logan repeated an apology that he made on election night.
“I hear you and I hear the voices of our voters and our poll workers, and it was not the implementation we hoped it would be,” Logan said. “I regret that and I apologize to the voters who were impacted by that, and I apologize to the election workers who worked diligently under difficult circumstances and I apologize to your board.”
However, Logan also expressed confidence in the voting model and the new machines.
“I don’t think the answer is to give up on this. I think the answer is to get it right,” he told the board. “I believe that the voting model is a sound model and I believe that the system that we built … is also solid.”
Logan said long lines were caused by a bottleneck at check-in and syncing issues with the electronic poll records. That piece of equipment was a commercial off-the-shelf solution certified by the Secretary of State for use in California and similar problems were reported with the same equipment in St. Louis Tuesday, according to Logan.
He agreed that workers lacked the necessary training, including to provide on-site fixes as problems arose. Many voting centers were too small or lacked cell connectivity needed for equipment. Same-day voter registration also taxed the system, he said.
“We now have data that we didn’t have before,” Logan said.
Logan told the board he ultimately wanted to give them a full and complete report — validated by others — on the technology, but said his preliminary review showed that issues with the voting machines did not affect residents’ ability to vote.
The board offered some suggestions of their own.
“I would double the number of places that people can vote” Supervisor Sheila Kuehl said.
There were less than 1,000 voting centers open on election day, as compared with more than 4,500 polling places available during the last presidential primary election.
Hahn and Kuehl both suggested limiting the early voting days to four rather than 11, given that voters didn’t seem to take advantage of the longer lead time.
California Secretary of State Alex Padilla called on Los Angeles County last week to automatically send vote-by-mail ballots to every voter in the county ahead of the November general election.
“Fifteen counties, including Los Angeles County, conducted their elections under the Voters Choice Act,” Padilla said in a statement. “In the 14 other Voters Choice Act counties, every voter received their ballot by mail 29 days in advance of the election and had multiple options for returning their ballot. Los Angeles must do the same.”
Logan said he wasn’t opposed to the idea, but pointed out that it would require mailing ballots to an estimated 2.5 million Los Angeles County voters who have never before requested a vote-by-mail ballot. That job couldn’t be done by the existing vote-by-email facility, he said.
Logan said he was looking into various options and that the decision to follow Padilla’s suggestion could be made by the board and would have to be made “soon” in order to get the work done by November.
Barger said that giving every potential voter a mail-in ballot was “like an insurance policy or safety net.”
Dozens of voters appeared before the board to share negative experiences. Many called for Logan’s resignation or firing.
“Dean Logan needs to go,” said Melissa Michelson, who identified herself as a delegate for the Democratic Party.
Hahn questioned whether the contract terms would allow the county to recoup some of the $300 million it spent on the new system.
“I feel like getting my money back,” Hahn told Logan.
Supervisor Mark Ridley-Thomas was more supportive, asking Logan about an exit poll of 3,600 voters at 50 voting centers conducted by Loyola Marymount University with apparently positive findings.
In response, Logan said the poll was the largest per capita exit poll in the nation and the results support his conviction that the model and equipment are sound.
The exit poll methodology was posted online by LMU researchers, but the results were not immediately available.
The board directed the CEO to hire the consultant and Logan to report back in 45 days. Kuehl called for a faster response, but Hahn said she was more worried about accuracy than speed.
Logan said he would be working to regain the board’s confidence and noted that the county will be running elections in April, May and June.
“We have to move quickly,” Logan said.
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TJock says
So the people that had no apparent foresight to hold an election and tabulate votes get duly compensated for their job and now public funds will go to a friend of a friend of some bureaucrat/politician to identify how the initial public employees failed? Sure, sounds about right to me. According to the lavote site my votes have yet to be counted.