Ballots

Ask a Republican in Washington state about Dean C. Logan, Los Angeles County's interim elections chief, and this might be the answer: "I'm really shocked that anyone would consider hiring Dean Logan to run an elections department," former state party leader Chris Vance said. Ask a Democrat there, and the answer might be like this: "He was marvelous. I have nothing but high praise for Dean," King County Executive Ron Sims said.

Orange County's grand jury recommended Wednesday that the Board of Supervisors put two tough campaign ordinances on the November ballot, just months after the board rejected such a request by campaign activists. The panel wants to tighten the county's 1978 law known as TINCUP, or Time Is Now, Clean Up Politics. The second measure creates a county campaign practices commission to oversee compliance with the law, the grand jury said.

County clerks across the state braced for continued heavy traffic today, some three days after same-sex marriages became legal in California. Although officials had anticipated a slowdown after Tuesday's record-breaking distribution of marriage licenses, many said they continued to see large numbers of couples seeking licenses. Traffic was expected to remain high today, they said, because Friday is a traditionally busy day in the world of marriage licensing.

Emotions may run high for California voters in November, not just over the choice of the next president but also over many of the 11 initiatives on the same ballot that tap into their personal beliefs. Voters will decide whether to ban same-sex marriage, require parents to be notified before an abortion is performed on a minor, free farm animals from tight enclosures and put criminals in jail longer.

Two weeks after election day, Kenneth Bennett and Paul Drugan were standing together at the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder's office in Norwalk, gazing through a window that looks into the ballot-counting room. Inside, under pale fluorescent light, workers moved like zombies, feeding ballot after ballot into machines with endless appetites. To Bennett and Drugan, this was a happy sight.

One day after The Times revealed that Los Angeles officials had secretly received a report warning that a solar power plan on the March 3 ballot was "extremely risky," the official who secured the analysis delivered it to the City Council. In envelopes stamped "confidential," Chief Legislative Analyst Gerry Miller, the council's top policy advisor, distributed a copy of a Nov. 4 memo he wrote to Council President Eric Garcetti listing 13 warnings about the solar plan.

Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Dzintra Janavs ruled Monday that Monica Rodriguez, a candidate for the City Council's 7th District, cannot call herself an "educator" on the March 6 ballot. Rodriguez is a manager of housing opportunities for the California Assn. of Realtors. John Shallman, her political consultant, said Rodriguez may appeal because her job entails educating the public on housing.

Riverside County's aging absentee ballot system needs a major overhaul, and election officials must do a better job convincing absentee voters -- who accounted for more than half the ballots cast in the November election -- to vote early, county officials said Tuesday.

"Have you seen your ballot?" Gloria Seiff of Beverly Hills asked friend and fellow resident Betty Harris over the phone. Harris had not. She opened the mail-in ballot and took one look. "I was shocked by it," she said. For the first time, Beverly Hills had translated its entire absentee and sample ballots into Persian. The ballots for the March 6 municipal election, in which two City Council seats are up for grabs, went out this month, and the response was swift.

BEST PICTURE "Babel" "The Departed" "Letters From Iwo Jima" "Little Miss Sunshine" "The Queen" ----- DIRECTOR Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, "Babel" Martin Scorsese, "The Departed" Clint Eastwood, "Letters From Iwo Jima" Stephen Frears, "The Queen" Paul Greengrass, "United 93" ----- ACTOR Leonardo DiCaprio, "Blood Diamond" Ryan Gosling, "Half Nelson" Peter O'Toole, "Venus" Will Smith, "The Pursuit of Happyness" Forest Whitaker, "The Last King of Scotland" ----- ACTRESS Penelope Cruz, "Volver"