Ballots

A state court judge in San Diego has upheld new state rules requiring election workers to recount ballots in 10% of precincts when elections are close. Election officials in San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino and Kern counties argued that the recounts are unnecessary, expensive and may delay the certification of election results. Under old rules, workers only needed to recount ballots in 1% of precincts. Tuesday's ruling means the new standard will go into effect for the state's Feb. 5 presidential primary.

Re "Electronic voting is facing a recall," Jan. 29, and "A paper jam roils state vote," Jan. 28 Speaking as a frequent election observer, your recent series about electronic voting was a good summary of various problems facing election officials and voters. Unfortunately, the transparency of the process and voter privacy have been sacrificed. Casting ballots is important, but counting the ballots is just as important. It is even more important that citizen observers actually see the ballots being counted.

Europe expressed relief after a pro-Western incumbent defeated an extreme nationalist for Serbia's presidency. Boris Tadic won 50.5% and his pro-Russian challenger, Tomislav Nikolic, had 47.7% -- a difference of about 128,000 votes among the 4.5 million ballots cast Sunday. The remaining 1.8% of ballots were invalid. The Tadic victory diminished fears in the West of a violent Serbian reaction to the ethnic Albanian-majority province of Kosovo's expected declaration of independence.

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. . . .

County elections officials should devise a way to count as many of the estimated 50,000 disqualified ballots as possible from last week's primary election as soon as possible, supervisors told Interim Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan on Tuesday. The votes were disqualified when independent voters who wanted to vote in the Democratic primary failed to mark a bubble that indicated they were voting as a Democrat. Logan told the board that the practice, which was used only in Los Angeles County, would be discontinued.

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.

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.