The Risk Factor

An article in today's Los Angeles Times tells the story of how, "Six years ago, Los Angeles County began using a ballot for nonpartisan voters that had a little-noticed design flaw. Confusion over how to mark the ballot, critics say, caused tens of thousands of votes to go uncounted in three elections between 2002 and 2006."

The story goes on, "At the time, election officials knew that some votes were not being counted but saw no need to make changes. After all, the missing votes went unnoticed in the three primary elections and no one complained."

However, a grass-roots advocacy group complained about it on the day before the 5th of February presidential primary in California. The advocacy group argued that "the ballot was defective because it required nonpartisans wanting to vote in a party primary to mark an extra bubble designating which party they were choosing."

Many voters would likely miss the bubble, and therefore invalidate their vote. Now it appears that about 50,000 voters did miss it, and didn't have their votes counted.

Needless to say, lots of folks are ticked off.

There may be flaws with e-voting systems which California has severely limited, but are they worse than this?