Trying to cast a Super Tuesday vote in Los Angeles County was a frustrating experience.
Los Angeles County debuted a new electronic voting system for this primary race — one that took nine years and $300 million to build. The touchscreen-based system was supposed to increase accessibility and make voting more convenient since polling place workers could confirm voter registration by looking it up on an iPad. Under the new system, voters could also vote at any voting center in Los Angeles County, rather than at predetermined neighborhood precincts. The new systems are also more accessible, as it includes 12 languages other than English and accommodations for physical impairments. Los Angeles County makes up the largest voting bloc in California, the Los Angeles Times reports.
But implementing a new system for all 5.5 million voters came with some significant stumbling.
I walked into my local polling place at 8:00 a.m. on Super Tuesday empowered by my brand new California driver’s license, which arrived in my mailbox a day before I cast my vote. Until then, I had only voted via absentee ballot in my home state because I assumed I’d move back. January 2020 sealed two years of living in Los Angeles full time, so I figured I’d start engaging with my new-but-not-that-new home’s local elections.
I registered to vote in Los Angeles on Feb. 10, eight days before the cutoff to vote in Tuesday’s primary elections. My sample ballot and voter guide arrived in the mail a week before the election. According to the Los Angeles County Registrar-Recorder County Clerk, my registration status is active and I’m eligible to vote in the 2020 primary.
But troubles started as soon as I tried to check-in. After spelling out my name and date of birth three times, the polling worker told me she was unable to confirm my registration on the iPad she was manning.
After some back and forth, another polling worker on a separate iPad was able to confirm my registration. Relieved to vote, I filled in my ballot at the machine and printed it out. Then, I fed it back into the machine so it could be placed in the secure ballot box.
The machine, though, wouldn’t accept my ballot. Instead of dropping it into the ballot box, it kept spitting out my printed ballot. After three tries a polling worker handed me a pink provisional ballot envelope and told me it would have to be counted later.
Kristina Meshelski@KrisMeshelski · 9h
Warning! At my polling center, the iPads checked me in as a provisional voter. Since I know there is no reason I would be provisional I had to insist that was a mistake and talk to two different poll workers until they realized it was because of iPads not syncing.
Kristina Meshelski@KrisMeshelski
This isn’t a huge problem because a provisional ballot would still be counted after the workers and the machines get everything sorted out. But that could be days later after the media has already reported results based on projections.4 1:32 AM – Mar 4, 2020
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Twitch streamer Michael Groth, who’s part of the streaming duo MandJTV, also tweeted about voting via provisional ballot. He said that the polling worker who checked him in noted nobody who had registered “in the past six months” was in the electronic database of registered voters.
We just voted here in LA and had to be given provisional ballots (mailed in, counted later). The guy checking us in said that no one who had registered in the past six months was in their system, which is kinda concerning??? 2331 2:03 AM – Mar 4, 2020
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And comedian Kathy Griffin tweeted about how she wasn’t registered in the right district, so she wasn’t able to vote for the local representatives she wanted to support.
Well well well, guess who was just told for the first time in 3 1/2 years that my information was not in the correct voter registry? Here’s a quick minute letting you know what happened. #SuperTuesday #VoteCalifornia @tedlieu @RichardBloom
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Attorney and election security advocate Jennifer Cohn aggregated a thread of frustrations voters are voicing on Twitter. Rep. Ted Lieu, who’s running for reelection, noted that his name doesn’t appear on the ballot unless voters hit “more,” and it’s possible to skip to the next race without even knowing there are more candidates.
Legit just created an entire Twitter account to tell the world @BernieSanders isn’t even on the first page of the ballot. You have to look for an icon located at the far bottom of the page then scroll to find his name #BernieBallot
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Thanks to broken machines in East L.A., residents had to vote via provisional ballots. Twitter users complained that the informational machine guides distributed to voters failed to mention that they had to reinsert the ballot into the machine to submit it.
It’s a mess. Should we be worried?
It’s easy to jump to conclusions and assume that the issues voters are running into are part of some grand scheme to disenfranchise the voices of the people. Maurice Turner, Deputy Director of the Internet Architecture Project at the Center for Democracy and Technology, has a more realistic explanation: It’s a new system, and there will be kinks that need to be smoothed out.
“There doesn’t seem to be any sign of malicious interference or any sort of wild conspiracy theory,” he said in a phone call to Mashable. “I definitely think voters should be confident their vote will count.”
I’ve voted in LA for sixteen years and before today I’d never waited in line longer than 20 minutes. Today I waited just over 2 hours. #VSAP
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While Turner applauds the county election officials for being responsive to questions and concerns on social media, he advises frustrated voters to seek out less crowded polling places if possible. He also noted that provisional ballots would be counted in California if they’re eligible. If you, like me, are simply a ball of anxious flesh, you can check on the status of your ballot by calling your county election officials.