Help Stop Voter Disenfranchisement in LA

Disclosure: I work for Courage Campaign

The California primary is not yet over. Even though the media has moved on, 94,000 voters in Los Angeles County have not. Their votes remain uncounted, victims of the so-called "double bubble trouble."

The Courage Campaign has been working overtime all week long to ensure that all these votes are counted. Dean Logan, Registrar of Voters for LA County, has offered to only count a 5% sample of the votes, instead of ensuring that all 94,000 voters have their rights respected, their votes counted. Those 94,000 votes are roughly HALF of all ballots cast by Decline to State voters in LA County on Tuesday.

To ensure that these votes get counted, Courage Campaign has launched an online petition with a simple message: Count. Every. Vote. In 24 hours we have received 15,000 signatures. Won't you add yours?

LA County voters have flooded the Courage Campaign's e-mail and website with their concerns that their votes have not been counted because they did not fill out the easy-to-miss second bubble on the poorly designed ballot. Justin H. submitted this comment, illustrating how important it is that all the votes get counted:

"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."

Leading Californians agree. The Sacramento Bee today wrote "the scale of the disenfranchisement is huge" and called on Dean Logan to count the votes:

Many voters do not see and do not fill out the second bubble – and, thus, their votes do not count....

Registrar Logan now has said that the county will look at the 94,500 uncounted ballots to see if they can "clearly identify the voters' intent." A clear mark for a presidential candidate should be enough....

The exciting 2008 election has encouraged a massive surge of participation. The state shouldn't squander it by disenfranchising qualified voters.

State Senator Dean Florez plans to introduce legislation to fix this and other problems with DTS voting, and while that is a welcome step, we still need added pressure to ensure that those who did the right thing and voted on Tuesday have their votes counted.

This isn't about who won or lost the primary. In fact, even when all these votes are counted it is unlikely any delegates will change. Instead this is about the fundamental right to democracy and to have one's vote be counted. Too often in the last eight years that hasn't happened. Too many times, votes have gone uncounted, voters have been disenfranchised. It's time for it to stop, no matter in which jurisdiction it has taken place.

Sign the petition - Count. Every. Vote. Take a stand for democracy and for voting rights.