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.

CAIRO - Seizing a moment in history they never imagined, the two old men walked arm in arm into a polling station on a day that was thoroughly and wonderfully Egyptian: Opinion polls were unreliable, intrigue was high, and there was a sense of destiny to rekindle the grandeur of the nation's ancient past. But it was also unlike any other day in this troubled land that has veered from euphoria to disgust to resilience: The name Hosni Mubarak wasn't on the ballot, and the two men didn't already know the outcome when they walked into the polling booth in an election that was as thrilling as it was unpredictable.

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.

Supporters of a proposed ballot measure seeking tighter regulation of health insurance rates in California turned in 800,000 petition signatures, confident that they will qualify for the Nov. 6 election. In the coming weeks, county election offices and the California secretary of state will determine whether the measure meets the requirement for 504,760 valid signatures of registered voters. The deadline to qualify is June 28. The initiative is expected to spark an expensive campaign battle over rising health insurance rates, which have angered thousands of California consumers in recent years.

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.

Most voters have by now received their sample ballots, and those who plan to vote by mail are sending in their applications. The June 5 election is underway right now. It is noteworthy for several reasons. Los Angeles County voters will be selecting a new district attorney, and this is the first time since 1964 that there is no incumbent trying to hold onto the seat. The field is wide open. To win outright in this nonpartisan race, a candidate must get more than 50% of the vote.

A slight blade misalignment in a ballot printing machine stirred up an election day problem Tuesday for a smattering of officials throughout Illinois who reported that as many as several thousand ballots were slightly too wide to fit in the counting machines. Both ballot companies and election supervisors in 25 affected counties worked throughout the morning to fix the problem. By midafternoon they had figured out that ballots from the bottom of the shrink-wrapped stacks were the right size, and that trimming a sliver off thick ballots already filled out was the quickest remedy.

Holding an election in a country at war is always a risky proposition, but perhaps more so in developing Afghanistan, where 70% of the population is illiterate, voter registration is problematic, and ballots for presidential and provincial council races reach remote areas by donkey. Taliban insurgents active in nearly half the country have called for a boycott of the Aug. 20 vote, a message they drove home this week with a rocket barrage on Kabul, the capital.

Arcadia city election officials have spent the last week trying to minimize the confusion from a Chinese translation error on the all-mail ballot for the city's general municipal election in April. The ballot, mailed to residents this month, provided instructions in four languages. English, Vietnamese and Spanish speakers read that they should "vote for no more than two" of the five candidates for City Council. In Chinese, the instructions read: "Vote for no more than three.

WASHINGTON -- In a revival of the controversy surrounding President Obama's Hawaii birth certificate, a state official in Arizona says it's “possible” that he'll hold Obama's name off the Arizona ballot if Hawaii officials don't send him confirmation that the president was born there. Arizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett, a Republican who is exploring a 2014 race for governor, says he waded into the issue after receiving more than 1,200 emails from people requesting that he verify Obama's birth in Hawaii before placing the president's name on the 2012 ballot.

Re: "Cigarette tax is a lifesaver," Column, May 14 I am not a smoker nor do I have any interest in the tobacco companies. Though I may agree in principle with George Skelton that cigarette companies are deceiving voters about Proposition 29, which would raise cigarette taxes $1 a pack to finance cancer research, I have a problem with the overall premise of the initiative. People have the idea that just throwing more cash at a problem is the best way to solve it. Here, the idea is that we improve cancer research by imposing $800 million in new taxes on smokers.

SACRAMENTO - Gov. Jerry Brown released a plan to close California's rapidly growing deficit by switching state offices to a four-day week, slashing welfare benefits and healthcare for the poor and relying on a variety of short-term fixes - all in the hopes that voters will give the state some breathing room by raising taxes in November. The governor, who unveiled his revised budget proposal in the Capitol on Monday, is facing a nearly $16-billion budget gap, far larger than the $9.2 billion he predicted in January.

In the first broad test of California's new "top-two" election system, many candidates in heated races for Congress and the state Legislature have been campaigning earlier, spending more money and downplaying their party affiliation as they try to widen their appeal. Gone are the party primaries, except in the presidential race. Now all state candidates appear on a single ballot. Only those who come in first or second on June 5 will move on to the November general election, in which no write-in or other added candidates will be allowed.

Most voters have by now received their sample ballots, and those who plan to vote by mail are sending in their applications. The June 5 election is underway right now. It is noteworthy for several reasons. Los Angeles County voters will be selecting a new district attorney, and this is the first time since 1964 that there is no incumbent trying to hold onto the seat. The field is wide open. To win outright in this nonpartisan race, a candidate must get more than 50% of the vote.

Every morning when UC San Diego physicist Herbert Levine laces up his running shoes and chugs alongside Mission Bay, his earphones crackle with radio ads opposing a proposed $1-per-pack cigarette tax to raise money for cancer research. The ads are funded by the tobacco industry. They call Proposition 29, the tobacco tax that state voters will consider on the June 5 ballot, a bureaucratic boondoggle, an initiative that would raise mountains of cash for research but not a penny for treatment.

Across Southern California, recession-pinched cities and school districts are asking their voters for help in Tuesday's local elections. Besides choosing from among scores of candidates for city councils, school boards and other local agencies, voters will decide on a slew of ballot questions, many of which involve money. With the state mired in its own budget problems and the effects of recession gripping California, local governments and school districts "are on their own" if they need more money, said Dan Carrigg, legislative director for the League of California Cities.