The courage campaign changed this. DTS voters heavily go for Barack, and the L.A. Mayor works with the Clinton campaign. Do the Math.
Dear Friend,
First, the good news.
In the days leading up to Super Tuesday, your people-powered activism made it possible for the Courage Campaign to contact 1.1 million independent “Decline-to-State” voters — yes, one-third of the 3 million total DTS voters in California — to inform them about their right to vote in Tuesday’s Democratic Party presidential primary.
Your support also made it possible for the Courage Campaign to place “Yes, You Can… Vote for President!” radio ads with Bradley Whitford on the air in Los Angeles and San Diego, expanding our original ad buy from radio stations in San Francisco, Sacramento, Fresno and Bakersfield.
The bad news?
In what the media is now calling “Double Bubble Trouble,” 94,000 “Decline-to-State” votes in Los Angeles County — 50% of the total DTS ballots cast — are being rejected due to a ballot design flaw, despite the Courage Campaign’s discovery of the “double bubble” problem and official notification to the Registrar prior to Election Day.
Unfortunately, Dean Logan, the Registrar in charge of Los Angeles County, is refusing to conduct a physical hand-count of every “Decline-to-State” vote before the official vote is certified in just a few weeks.
http://www.couragecampaign.org/CountEveryVote
Last weekend, lawyers for the Courage Campaign uncovered the “double bubble” problem — a shocking requirement that “Decline-to-State” voters fill in a redundant “Democratic” bubble (on a ballot clearly marked “Democratic Party”) as well as a bubble next to their preferred presidential candidate. Our legal team realized that — without the “Democratic” bubble filled in — the county’s optical scanners would void votes for “President of the United States,” regardless of voter intent.
On Monday morning, 24 hours before polls opened, we sent a letter from our lawyer to the L.A. ROV, threatening legal action if the Registrar did not rectify the ballot problem before the primary. Unfortunately, on Election Day, polling places across Los Angeles erupted as the votes of DTS voters were rejected, even though almost every one of these voters clearly intended to vote for either Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton. According to the Los Angeles Times:
The registrar’s comments followed an uproar among decline-to-state voters in the county who discovered too late that they were required to mark a bubble on the ballot denoting which party primary they were voting in. Some complained that poll workers told them not to mark the bubble; others said they were unaware of the requirement, which is unique to L.A. County.
Had we not warned Dean Logan and the press on Monday, the numbers of disenfranchised voters could have been significantly higher. As a result of our threatened legal action, the Associated Press, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and several TV and radio stations jumped on the issue immediately and Logan issued a Public Service Announcement and last-minute directions to poll workers.
http://www.couragecampaign.org/CountEveryVote
We don’t know if this “Double Bubble Trouble” will change the number of delegates that either Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama will receive. But we do know that we need to protect voter rights, increase voter confidence in our elections system, and prevent this from ever happening again.
We live in a democracy in which every vote is supposed to count. But, in Los Angeles on Tuesday, the votes of almost 100,000 Decline-to-State voters were rejected because they didn’t fill in an extra, irrelevant bubble.
http://www.couragecampaign.org/CountEveryVote
We know Secretary Debra Bowen is paying attention. And we have friends in Los Angeles who are focused on this issue as well– like Eric Garcetti, President of the Los Angeles City Council, and Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky — but they need your help. With hearings being set up by State Senator Dean Florez and the eyes of California voters converging on Los Angeles County, there’s no time to waste.
Thank you so much for your activism, especially today.
Rick Jacobs
ChairP.S. Please read this heartbreaking message that we just received from Julian H., a young man voting for the very first time:
“I’ve been following politics before I even hit my teens. And 2 weeks before this election, I turned 18, with my registration in weeks before. I knew the issues, the candidates, the propositions, and for the fist time in my life cast a ballot. I heard the next day about the double bubble. No one at the polls mentioned it, and I didn’t see instructions that even pointed to its existence. It’s not such a great feeling that you’re first close up experience in a system you’ve watched for so long at a distance could have amounted to nothing.”
If you know of any “Decline-to-State” voters in Los Angeles like Julian H., please send them to a special web page we have set up specifically for disenfranchised DTS voters:
http://www.couragecampaign.org/LosAngelesVotes
………
Courage Campaign is an independent political committee and online organizing network empowering grassroots and netroots activists to build a progressive California. In 2008, the Courage Campaign will catalyze action to increase California’s importance in the race for the White House, hold our elected officials accountable, and block Blackwater from building a base on our border.
“Congratulations to Rick Jacobs and the folks at the Courage Campaign for all of their hard work on this issue — their grassroots organizing efforts have been incredibly successful and effective.” – Kim Alexander, California Voter Foundation
Dear Darin,
We won!
After weeks of bad news, here’s the good news: Tens of thousands of “Decline-to-State” (DTS) voters — who intended to cast a ballot for Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton on Super Tuesday — will now have their “double bubble” votes counted by the Los Angeles County Registrar of Voters.
And it’s because of you.
Thank you to the eye-popping 32,802 concerned Californians who signed our “Count Every Vote” petition to Dean Logan, the Acting Registrar of Los Angeles County.
Thank you to the amazing 437 generous donors who raised a whopping $16,572 to help our legal team keep up the pressure on Logan.
Thank you to the grassroots and the netroots — the activists and bloggers who raised their voices loud enough so that the Los Angeles Times (see article below) and other major media outlets could no longer ignore the problem.
Thank you to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, and in particular Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, for working with our lawyers to bring an end to this double bubble trouble.
And thank you to Secretary of State Debra Bowen, who suggested the methods used by Logan to make sure that every vote that can be counted… will be counted.
Because of you, Dean Logan is going to do what the Courage Campaign has advocated since the day after the primary election: where and when voter intent can be accurately determined, Logan will count the ballots of DTS voters who tried to vote for president in the Democratic and American Independent Party primaries.
This means that thousands of voters who intended to cast a ballot for Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama will not be disenfranchised. Every ballot — in which voter intent can be clearly and concretely ascertained — will be counted.
Will this change the delegate count for each candidate? Not according to our estimates. But counting delegates has always been a secondary goal to counting every possible vote and to sending the message to citizens that their votes will count.
Fortunately, there’s even more good news: Dean Logan and the Supervisors have also promised to junk the “double-bubble” ballot design so that voters in future elections will not be disenfranchised.
We look forward to working with Acting Registrar Dean Logan, the County, Secretary Bowen, and our friends in the election protection community to make sure this never happens again.
32,802 petitions signed. 437 donors. $16,572 raised. Tens of thousands of votes counted. And the end of “double-bubble” ballots.
Of course, that was just what you did after Super Tuesday. Before the primary — and before our legal team uncovered the double-bubble ballot problem — you helped the Courage Campaign contact 1.1 million DTS voters with one simple message on the radio, via video, and by email and phone: “Yes, You Can… Vote for President!”
From “Yes, You Can…” to “Count Every Vote!”, thank you again for making these people-powered victories possible. This is the kind of grassroots activism that will make 2008 a new era for progressive politics in California.
Rick Jacobs
ChairP.S. We’ve won a big victory for voter rights in California. Thanks to the relentless efforts of so many, including our legal team, “double bubble” ballots are now history. And tens of thousands of votes for Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that would have gone uncounted… will now be counted.
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