Absenteeism

As Los Angeles prosecutors investigate potential voter fraud in Bell, several residents have told The Times that city officials pressed them to fill out absentee ballots in a way that election experts say may have violated state law. Four voters said city officials walked door-to-door encouraging them to fill out absentee ballots. In one case, a woman said she signed papers she believed were election paperwork. She never filed an absentee ballot. But when she went to the polls on election day, records showed that she had voted absentee.

Members of the Los Angeles City Council can no longer go behind closed doors in the middle of public meetings while their computers automatically vote "yes" in their absence, according to rules imposed Tuesday by council leaders. The absent voting practice was the subject of a Times analysis two months ago. Although the rules regulate the movement of council members, they also place new restrictions on council chamber access previously provided to reporters and aides to Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa.

It's not just the Swiss Re "A Swiss miss on minarets," Editorial, Dec. 2 The Times asks, "Why should Saudi Arabia allow Christians to worship openly if . . . Switzerland requires Muslims to efface their identity?" Why does Switzerland set this agenda? Why does Saudi Arabia get, at this very late date, to further its delay of human rights to its citizens and legal immigrants because of a tiny European country's bad behavior? The center of Islam doesn't forbid just church towers -- it forbids churches and synagogues and temples of every sort.

As California strives to hold its public schools accountable for teaching all children, the state is missing a crucial piece of data: a snapshot of how many children chronically miss class. It's not that teachers aren't taking attendance; they do that every day, because state funding depends on how many students show up. And it's not that schools aren't tracking down truants. Compulsory education requires monitoring unexcused absences. What California doesn't do in a systematic way is pay attention when students miss extended periods of school because of excused, as well as unexcused, absences.

Not that long ago, 19 months to be exact, the Lakers and New Orleans Hornets were enmeshed in a late-season race for the top seeding in the Western Conference. Now the Hornets can't even come close to beating the Lakers -- despite another night of only suits and ties for Andrew Bynum and Pau Gasol. The Lakers toyed with the Hornets on Sunday night, leading by as many as 27 points on the way to a 104-88 victory at Staples Center. Kobe Bryant didn't need to score 41 points again, settling for 28 on a night when the Lakers cruised despite missing two-thirds of their starting frontcourt.

Minnesota Supreme Court justices expressed skepticism Monday of Republican Norm Coleman's claim that thousands of absentee ballots in his Senate race against Democrat Al Franken were illegally excluded. During the hearing in St. Paul, Minn., justices pointed out that Coleman's legal team acknowledged that no voter fraud had taken place. A lower court ruled in April that Franken had won the race by 312 votes.

The two candidates in a New York congressional race that focused on President Obama's economic policies are separated by only 65 votes with all the precincts reporting and more than 150,000 votes counted. Democrat Scott Murphy, 38, holds the slim lead over Republican Jim Tedisco, 58. The race will come down to roughly 10,000 absentee ballots, none of which were to be counted on election night, officials said.

The judges in Minnesota's U.S. Senate trial said in a preliminary ruling Friday that Republican Norm Coleman had not yet shown a widespread problem with absentee voters being denied the right to vote. The three-judge panel ordered that rejected absentee ballots from 12 of 19 categories should not be counted in the Senate race. Coleman, who is trying to undo Democrat Al Franken's 225-vote lead, had wanted to count ballots in all but three of the categories.

Question: There are 55 single-family homes in my homeowners association and I am the vice president of the five-member board of directors. Our board president moved out of state and her home is now a rental. She wants to continue on our board as president. She says she'll communicate by e-mail and conference calls. There is nothing in our covenants, conditions and restrictions (CC&Rs) or bylaws dealing with this issue. I'd like to convene a special meeting of the board and ask her to resign.

Before they fell victim to violence, students who were slain or shot had poor school attendance, according to data released Thursday by the Baltimore school system and health department. Between 2003 and 2007, 115 youths in Baltimore were killed and 405 were victims of nonfatal shootings, health department figures show. The school system was able to retrieve attendance data going back to 1999 for 391 of the 520 victims. The health department pooled the data from the two agencies.