Opinion: Why can’t a statewide non-partisan direct primary election get any respect?
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California Progress Report posts a jeremiad called ‘What’s the matter with Los Angeles When It Comes to Elections?’ and it doesn’t even mention that there’s an election today! But if you’ve had trouble voting today, you still might want to take a look:
With the largest concentration of voters in the State, 18 Congressional Districts are partly or wholly contained in the County, along with 14 State Senators and 26 Assembly-members.
(The L.A. Times is not responsible for unattached participles in sentences written by other publications.) The Report cites a host of troubles, and lays the blame for most of them on former Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder Conny McCormack, who has ‘close ties to Diebold,’ and on her sucessor Dean Logan, who ‘has no college education.’ (If true, that should be considered a point in his favor.) I think it’s time to let up on McCormack and give Logan a chance. They’re like Boris and Natasha to Southern California fraudsters.
Still, vote-count enthusiasts have a point. I find Diebold somewhat like Freddy Kruger: scary the first few times but now so familiar as to be little more than a wisecracking old pal. But it’s jarring to consider that we accept in voting an ambient level of inaccuracy that would never be allowed in a banking software, a weapons system or any other product the public actually cared about.