For many voters, last Tuesday was a complete disaster in Los Angeles. Voters who belonged to no party or (the “decline-to-state” voters) were unable to vote for the Deomcratic candidate of their choice.
Where most counties simply give nonpartisan voters a party ballot at their request, Los Angeles County gives nonpartisan voters a separate ballot that requires voters to fill out a bubble for the presidential candidate of their choice – and a second bubble for a political party.
Many voters do not see and do not fill out the second bubble – and, thus, their votes do not count.
Could this be one of the major faults of allowing each county to have it’s own rules and ballot designs? Is this really necessary? Would we all just be better off voting for the same thing, since we all are voting for the same thing? Although this country is vast and separated by many small states and even smaller counties, we are all voting for one thing, the President of the United States.
This is not the first time that there has been a ballot issue that have possibly had an effect on the outcome. Many of us remember the Florida “butterfly ballot” problem in the 2000 Presidential election with Kerry and Bush. Over 19,000 Palm Beach Country residents did not have their ballot counted because of a badly designed ballot. Would it have made a difference? Who knows. The problem is, is that there is a problem and it needs to be fixed. The “double-bubble” problem has happened before. Back in 2004 and 2006 elections, 40% of the country’s decline-to-state voters were not counted!
County election officials knew that the decline-to-state vote in the Democratic Party primary Feb. 5 would be huge. Yet they failed to establish a system that would ensure that nonpartisan voters’ votes would count.
So how do we fix it? I think that if we are all voting for the same people, we should all be voting on the same ballot. But, I could be wrong, what do you think is the answer? I’d love to know.
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2 responses so far ↓
1 Emberly Modine // Feb 12, 2008 at 3:48 pm
we should all be using the same ballot - do people in north carolina speak a different language? on second thought, don’t answer that…
2 Jon // Feb 13, 2008 at 8:09 am
feofofbo double bubble…..arg
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