L.A. County election czar's to-do list includes reforms

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  Gary Friedman / Los Angeles Times

Even after he records the final results from Tuesday's historic presidential election, Los Angeles County's election czar isn't likely to get any rest.

When he's done counting roughly 16% of the ballots left over from Nov. 4, Dean Logan, the county's registrar-recorder, will turn his attention toward improving the democratic process for the next generation. On his list: replacing the county's much-maligned voting equipment, increasing the number of early voting sites and streamlining mail-in balloting in the nation's largest voting district.

"There's no room for any complacency in this process," said Logan, 41, in a post-election interview.

By most accounts Logan did a good job, handling the highest number of voters -- about 3.5 million -- to ever turn out for an election in L.A. County. He had already overcome two other major challenges this year -- including validating about 38,000 disputed ballots from the Feb. 3 primary and processing a flood of same-sex marriage ceremonies in the summer.

"I want to personally applaud the registrar's office," said Jackie Dupont-Walker, president of Ward Economic Development Corp., a community-based group in Los Angeles that served as a polling place last week. "I know they did extraordinary things."

But voters' rights advocates and Logan acknowledged that a record number of voter registrations and applications to vote by mail, combined with the high voter turnout, brought to the forefront long-standing problems with the voting process:

* Voter registration and vote-by-mail application deadlines that are too close to election day, making it difficult for workers to enter data in time and leaving no room to correct errors.

* Federal and state election laws that confuse voters and poll workers.

* Alternative voting methods such as early voting and processing vote-by-mail applications that require more resources to avoid glitches.

Problems arose in some Los Angeles County precincts, including Dupont-Walker's. At least half the voters who arrived at her polling place -- about 200 people in her estimation -- found they weren't listed in poll books or on supplemental lists, even though they received sample ballots.

Many of these residents joined about 243,700 county voters who cast provisional ballots because of polling place problems.