By dixie
When I voted in the California Democratic primary as a “Nonpartisan” voter earlier this month, I did note the bit above the actual selection area that said “For Nonpartisan voters only: ‘Democratic’ ” and inked the bubble, hoping I wasn’t invalidating my choice. There was certainly doubt in my mind.
As it turns out, nearly 50,000 voters unaffiliated with a political party did invalidate their votes by not filling in that bubble on their ballots. Apparently this ballot design, in addition to being obstructively confusing, is illegal because it requires some voters (like me) to take an extra step to vote versus other voters (like anyone who registered Democrat).
This “design flaw” didn’t trip me up in the 2004 election, but the fact that the poll workers were useless and my own lack of research ahead of time did lead to me not voting at all in the Democratic primary that year. (I’d had some idea that I could vote in the Democratic primary, but when I wandered up to do so the poll worker handed me a nonpartisan ballot and shooed me off towards the nonpartisan voting booth, rather than the Democratic booth I should have gone to.) It hadn’t occurred to me that anything was wrong until I was contacted by a reporter collecting information and opinions from independent voters, and today was the first time I found out people were getting hot and bothered about it.
How ’bout that. Maybe my vote really does count.
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20th of February, 2008
I think I might have neglected that bubble you are referring to…that’s quite bothersome, isn’t it. So, my vote doesn’t count? I can’t remember, age it seems… :|
20th of February, 2008
It might count, if you voted for either Obama or Clinton, because of the way the ballots are laid out. I read something that indicated they might fish out the ballots that lack the extra bubble mark but have a mark for a primary candidate and divine the choice (it’s possible in some cases), but it requires some assumptions and a lot of work.
In any case, the returns for LA county had a wide enough margin that it wouldn’t make much of a difference if they did go through and hand process those ballots. (I hate typing that sentence because it sounds like another way of saying “Your vote doesn’t matter” which is neither true nor fair.)