Advocates demand ballots for all

November 03, 2008

LA Daily News
Wire Services

Obama, McCain in final sprint for White HouseRepublicans warning of Democrats controlling Congress and White HouseCampaign comes to churches on final SundayWith voter turnout expected to exceed 80 percent Tuesday, voting rights advocates demanded Sunday that Los Angeles County officials supply enough ballots for a 100 percent turnout.

The demand came as Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Dean Logan asked voters to cast their ballots at off-peak hours Tuesday to avoid lines of two hours or more. Elections advocates pointed toward "a looming crisis" and fired off a letter to Logan demanding that sufficient ballots be printed to handle every inactive and active voter who might show up at the polls.

Sheri Myers, an advocate at Work The Vote, said voting inspectors in low-income neighborhoods are finding as as few as half as many printed ballots as voters on the rolls.

"Inspectors are looking at the number of inactive voters who are likely to show up and saying, `Oh, my goodness, look what could happen,"' she said.

The elections chief responded Sunday with a letter describing the county's state-approved contingency plan.

Logan said "the ballot supply should be, in most precincts, more than sufficient to meet demand."

L.A. County polling places will hand out generic, yellow emergency ballots in precincts where precinct-specific preprinted ballots run out. The yellow ballots would be placed into ballot boxes as normal, but those boxes would be "snagged" as they enter the counting center.

Emergency ballots will be transcribed by elections workers onto regular ballots before any regular ballots are counted, Logan said.
That process means no precinct totals from areas using emergency ballots will be reported until all emergency ballots are recast by hand onto normal ballots by county workers, Logan's letter said.

Late Sunday, the voter advocacy group and concerned pollworkers notified Logan and the Board of Supervisors demanding one printed ballot per registered voter be available at every polling station on Election Day so all ballots can be immediately counted Tuesday night.

Election officials expect more voters will cast ballots in California on Tuesday than ever before - and they are likely to need a lot more time to count them.

Soaring voter registration in the run-up to the presidential election has officials planning round-the-clock vote counts and borrowing additional machines to scan ballots in the hours after the polls close.

With so many voters heading to the polls for the presidential race, the tally could take even longer.

That is especially true because so many voters have requested mail-in ballots, some of which won't be returned until Election Day and will not be counted until all others have been tallied.

Some closely contested statewide ballot measures and political races might not be called on Election Night if too many ballots remain to be counted, according to several county registrars.

"We will not have results as quickly because of the volume," said John Arntz, director of elections in San Francisco, adding that each voter in his district will turn in a four-card ballot covering local measures as well as the statewide races and presidential contest.

Voter registration has soared to a record high in California, fueled by the excitement over the first presidential race in decades in which neither an incumbent nor a vice president is running.

In California, voter rolls have ballooned to 17.3 million - more people than live in any other state except Texas, New York or Florida. Several California counties are predicting more than 80 percent turnout at the polls.

Although polls close at 8 p.m., voters who are in line at that hour will be allowed to cast their ballots.

Many election officials expect precinct workers will not be able to start wrapping up until nearly 9 p.m.

Source: LA Daily News