Bubble ballot smackdown!

Secretary of State Debra Bowen and Los Angeles County elections officials have been sniping at each other for a year and a half now, mostly over the security of electronic voting systems and Bowen's decision to decertify some equipment. The frosty relations have persisted despite attempts by Supervisor Zev Yaroslavsky, who has a good relationship with Bowen, to get the state and county on the same page.

Now Bowen and Acting Los Angeles County Registrar Dean Logan — and his predecessor, Registrar Conny McCormack — will face off in a special joint legislative committee hearing in Los Angeles to talk about the county's problems with the so-called bubble ballot in the Feb. 5 Democratic presidential primary. The session is set for Friday at 1 p.m. in the Ronald Reagan State Building auditorium at 300 S. Spring St. in downtown.

In addition to the bubble trouble — in which perhaps 200,000 voters very nearly had their votes tossed — voters have been reporting that they arrived at the polls to find that their party registration had mysteriously changed without their knowledge. That is, potentially, an even bigger problem. In a primary election, party registration dictates what ballot a voter gets.

In the bubble mess, thousands of independent Los Angeles County voters who opted to vote in the Democratic primary failed to mark a "bubble" on the ballot card, perhaps because poll workers didn't tell them they had to. Logan reported last week that about 150,000 of those ballots will be counted after all, because his office can deduce what the voters intended to do; another 50,000 remained problematic, although Logan told the board of Supervisors he expected to be able to finally count "the lion's share" of those. He also said the June 3 ballot will be redesigned to eliminate the bubble.

Logan and McCormack have been targeted by critics, from both the right and the left, who claim they are trying to undermine the fairness of elections for the benefit of equipment vendors or political interests. The Times has come in for its share of criticism for its manner of covering the issue. McCormack successfully ran numerous elections in the nation's largest county.

Tuesday is the deadline for certifying the results of the Feb. 5 election.

The hearing will be conducted by Senators Jenny Oropeza and Ron Calderon, and Assemblyman Curren Price. All are Democrats representing parts of Los Angeles County.