Ballots

Acting Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan told supervisors Tuesday he believed that at least 25,000 of the 50,000 discarded ballots from the Democratic presidential primary will end up being valid. Supervisors told Logan earlier this month to devise a way to count all the ballots that had been disqualified from the Feb. 5 primary election. Votes were disqualified when independent voters who wanted to vote in the Democratic or American Independent party primaries failed to mark a bubble that indicated their party choice.

Los Angeles County elections officials said Tuesday they have been able to count most of the Feb. 5 presidential primary ballots that had been set aside because some voters found them confusing. Acting Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan had said that about 50,000 votes were not counted after independent voters failed to mark a bubble indicating they wanted to vote in the Democratic or American Independent party primaries. Over the weekend, an additional 10,000 absentee and provisional ballots were processed, Logan said during an appearance before the county Board of Supervisors.

Election experts testified Friday before state legislators about the problems that surrounded the Feb. 5 presidential primary, particularly voter confusion that stemmed from the so-called double-bubble ballot. About 50,000 votes were initially discarded after independent voters failed to mark a bubble indicating they wanted to vote in the Democratic Party or American Independent Party primary. Acting Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean Logan said this week that he had validated about 80% of those ballots, after elections workers successfully determined voter intent on all but about 12,000 votes.

Sen. Norm Coleman has failed to block some absentee ballots from being counted in his close race with Al Franken. A Ramsey County judge Saturday denied the request because of lack of jurisdiction. The Republican incumbent had tried to block 32 ballots from heavily Democratic Hennepin County. Coleman's campaign says the ballots were not counted on election day or were not kept in sealed boxes. The latest tally has Coleman leading Democrat Franken by about 200 votes. A recount is planned.

Days before his hotel-condominium plan was to be reviewed by Anaheim city planners, a developer said he may scrap his project over concerns about the crumbling housing and hotel markets and the pressure of a looming Disney-backed ballot initiative. Derek Baak's proposal is one of at least two residential projects in Anaheim's Resort District that would face a citywide vote if an anti-housing initiative passes in June.

At first it seemed voters in Santa Ana would be asked to consider setting term limits for the mayor. After all, the current mayor has been in office for 16 years. But after much discussion, council members went in the opposite direction. Instead of setting term limits for the mayor's office, voters in Orange County's largest city next month will be asked to increase the number of terms council members can serve.

The absence of Sen. Barack Obama's name from today's Michigan Democratic primary ballot has angered a large swath of African American voters here, exacerbating a racial political divide and threatening party unity heading into the November general election. Many black voters are already unhappy about the state's new voter identification law and a 2006 voter-approved referendum barring affirmative action in public hiring.

Michael Nola, a poll worker in Claremont, went to two training sessions before election day and was instructed that nonpartisan voters were entitled to cast ballots in the Democratic Party or American Independent Party primaries. What he never learned in class was that in addition to selecting a candidate, these voters were required to mark a bubble on their ballots indicating which party primary they were voting in. . . .

Six years ago, Los Angeles County began using a ballot for nonpartisan voters that had a little-noticed design flaw. Confusion over how to mark the ballot, critics say, caused tens of thousands of votes to go uncounted in three elections between 2002 and 2006. At the time, election officials knew that some votes were not being counted but saw no need to make changes. After all, the missing votes went unnoticed in the three primary elections and no one complained. That all changed with the Feb.

A Disney-backed ballot initiative that would essentially strip the Anaheim City Council of its authority to make land use decisions in the city's resort district apparently will still go before Anaheim voters in June. Mayor Curt Pringle asked the council to bypass the ballot and instead adopt the initiative outright, saving taxpayers about $250,000 in election costs. But a majority of the five-member council has indicated a desire to see the anti-housing measure remain on the June 3 ballot.