Hearing focuses on election ills

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.

State Sen. Ron Calderon (D-Montebello) told the audience at the Ronald Reagan State Building in downtown Los Angeles that he would urge state officials not to reimburse the county for the costs of validating the ballots.

Logan told Calderon, who was joined by state Sens. Jenny Oropeza (D-Long Beach) and Mark Ridley-Thomas (D-Los Angeles), as well as Assemblyman Curren Price Jr. (D-Inglewood), that the double-bubble ballot had been discontinued and that a new design was being researched.

Calderon said Friday’s hearing helped the legislators come up with ways to curtail future election day problems, including providing the secretary of state with a centralized way of communicating with polling places across the state and a statewide system for voters to report problems at the polls.

-- Jean-Paul Renaud