Denial of GOP ballots tops poll problems

The San Diego Union-Tribune ^ | February 7, 2007 | Craig Gustafson

[TankerKC]

Some voters are livid. Conservative talk-radio hosts hammered away at the injustice. The Republican Party's San Diego chapter is investigating.

Why were so many longtime Republicans denied that party's ballot on Super Tuesday? Stop the conspiracy theories. The culprit turns out to be the state GOP and good, old-fashioned paperwork – the kind where technicalities can be so technical.

The state party's decision to hold a closed primary left nonpartisan voters unable to request a Republican ballot. This has been the case for years for the presidential nomination – not state races – but went unnoticed in 2004 because President Bush ran unopposed.

In turn, a vast majority of voters who thought they were registered Republicans in fact were not. They were listed as nonpartisan if they changed their address with the registrar of voters but failed to mark a political party on the form.

Those voters never noticed before because they had been allowed to request Republican ballots in state races, which are open to nonpartisans.

Local radio hosts Rick Roberts and Roger Hedgecock railed yesterday on the apparent slight against Republicans. The chairman of the Republican Party of San Diego County, Tony Krvaric, said the group is looking into all complaints from its members to see if any were wrongly denied a vote.

By far, the denial of a Republican ballot was the most common complaint at the county Registrar of Voters Office during and after the election. Election officials received hundreds of calls and are sifting through each case.

Most of these would-be Republicans fall into two categories: They failed to select a party on their voter registration forms or they chose “decline to state.” In either case, voters are then considered nonpartisan.

County spokesman Mike Workman said some voters may have chosen “decline to state” thinking it was a privacy issue, but the registrar needs to know a voter's party affiliation to hand out the correct ballots on Election Day.

Workman said there were about five cases of data-entry errors by the registrar's office that resulted in voters being classified incorrectly. Those problems were resolved and their votes counted.

Voters such as Ben Hoy, however, won't be so lucky.

Hoy, 27, showed up at his San Marcos polling place Tuesday and asked for a Republican ballot. Poll workers told him he was listed as nonpartisan but allowed him to cast a provisional ballot for Republicans.

Hoy's voting record shows that he failed to declare a party on his voter registration form when he moved in October 2005. Since he's nonpartisan, his ballot won't be counted.

“I'm not OK with that,” Hoy said. “They should at least look at the history of what you've done in the past. . . . They can see I used to be a registered Republican” in previous elections.

Airline pilot Greg Conitz, 50, found himself in a similar bind when poll workers refused to give him a GOP ballot because of his nonpartisan status. Conitz moved to Julian in 2004 and re-registered to vote, but records show that he failed to select a party. The lifelong Republican doesn't recall filling out the form but didn't dispute its accuracy.

“It aggravates you, certainly, probably quite a bit, especially at the moment you realize you can't vote,” Conitz said. “And now I realize that it's very important for me to keep a very close eye when they do send out ballot forms.”

Hoy and Conitz were two of a dozen voters who contacted The San Diego Union-Tribune complaining about problems at the polls.

Other voter issues include:

Poll workers looking at voters' ballots. The newspaper received numerous complaints about workers improperly looking at completed ballots before putting them in secure boxes.

Richard Burger, a La Jolla chiropractor, said it was “beyond appalling” that workers violated his right to a secret ballot.

Election officials acknowledged that they had complaints and said some workers weren't following procedure. Poll workers should never have to look at a filled-in ballot, they said.

One voter complained of missing absentee ballots for a group of Tierrasanta voters. Officials could find no evidence to verify the problem.

[TankerKC]

Try being smart some time.

You don't know me or the folks that this happened to. If you are itching for a fight, move on. I'm not interested.

[TankerKC]

Geeez......Ain't that simple logic.....

That's more "simple" than "logic," but ok....

[MEGoody]

Lack of communication on a change in the election process is not limited to the CA GOP.

Kansas decided to have a caucus this election cycle - first time in 20 years. Until I, as a precint person, raised caine with the state GOP, hardly any communication had been made to the public.

[PeteB570]

“I’m proud of you.” your words for me knowing my status.

People who don’t know their voter status get no sympathy from me.

People who try to stir things up over such people I don’t think too much of.

A closed primary is a closed primary.

The bursting radius of an excuse is zero meters.

[hoppity]

My sample ballot has my party affiliation on it. Don’t many people check that? I wonder if there is time to fix the problem if it is noticed then.

[HawaiianGecko]

"...that had their registration cards with them ..."
Not to belabor the point but I can think of two simple explanations for that.  One, the state readily admits a certain amount of data entry error.  Having been in IT for 35+ years I can say that data entry rates for typical users, are much higher than professional key-punch clerks. I'm sure county and precinct boards have multi-use clerks keying this data.  Let's assume 1% error rate.  Out of  2,350,994 GOP votes that would be 23,510 errors.  Did the radio stations get that many or more calls?
Second, while I cannot imagine a caller on a call-in political talk radio show lying... I must leave this option open.

[Cold Heat]

We have open primaries in my state.

Independents can request a Republican or Dem ballot. The State is run by Dem's, and this is a Dem scheme to recover people who left the Dem party when Clinton was testing cigars in the WH.

Republicans never had that problem, and use the restricted primary to keep people in the fold. It has always been this way. We believe in the Republic, not a Democracy and participants don't have any voting rights in primary's. The primary is a Party thing.

It should remain so.

[TankerKC]

Second, while I cannot imagine a caller on a call-in political talk radio show lying... I must leave this option open.

Lying is an option. So are exaggeration and confusion. :)

[pepperdog]

Had several registered Independents come to our precinct and were irate that they were not allowed to choose a ballot and vote. I felt bad for them, but tried to explain that we have closed primaries...some just couldn’t understand, others took a voter registration card to change their party from Independent to either Dem or Repub and a few said they wouldn’t join either party regardless, just didn’t want to join a political party. And so it goes.

[Poincare]

How would they know which Republicans to deny and which to allow?

The demographics (location esp.) of the two wings of the California GOP are well known. Orange County is conservative, e.g., and the central to north coast is liberal. The next question would be, "Did the liberal GOP areas have the same complaint?" I have not yet heard so.

[drjimmy]

The even simpler explanation is contained in the last part of the sentence: "that had their registration cards with them when they went to the polls and the cards proved that they were registered as Republicans...at one time."

It doesn't matter if they were registered Republicans at one time, if they aren't registered Republicans at the time of the primary. Blame the state GOP for changing the rules and blame the voters for not paying attention to the change.

[bmwcyle]

Soros has many friends.

[dpwiener]

A “decline to state” should have been interpreted as “don’t change what I already am”, not a “switch me to non-partisan”.

Sorry, can't do that. "Decline to state" may be a very intentional choice. For one thing, it gives people the leeway to vote in any of the primaries of those parties which choose to be open to "decline to state" voters. For example, in 2010 the Republicans could choose that option, and the Democrats could choose not to allow that option. It's up the the political parties.

This was a problem that was probably predictable ahead of time (if anyone had thought of it) but also unavoidable. There will always be some percentage of voters who are registered "declined to state" (for whatever reason or mistake) but think they are registered with a particular party. For many years it didn't matter, since they could still get Republican ballots. This is the first time it did matter, so this is the first time the problem became visible.

Ideally, voters should have paid attention when they voted in the past (or when they received receipts in the mail from the Registar of Voters after re-registering to change their address or whatever). They should have noticed errors and gotten those errors corrected ahead of time. The large majority probably do so, but you're always going to be left with some smaller percentage who aren't observant or don't bother to check. They are the ones who found they couldn't vote in the Republican primary this year.

Were there real instances of screw-ups, where the voter really was a Republican and the Registrar of Voters had made a mistake? Undoubtedly there were a few of those. There are every year in every party; mistakes happen. But those are fairly rare. The great bulk of problems this year was due to voters' own faults.

I have very little sympathy for voters who can't mark a ballot correctly or can't keep their registration straight. I look at it as a desirable form of natural selection: the votes of stupid voters aren't counted. Sort of a very crude intelligence test, with a very low bar. It's better than nothing.

[HawaiianGecko]

"The problem I think was in the process of address changes. A “decline to state” should have been interpreted as “don’t change what I already am”, not a “switch me to non-partisan”.
I'm not too sure about that.  It depends upon the definition of "decline to state" when the government put that as an option on the mailings.  I have a tough time imagining them defining it any other way than it was interpreted Tuesday.  If I were to chose "decline to state" it would be because I don't want anyone to have a record of which party I prefer, not for them to keep me on the roles as a Republican or Democrat.

I also have a tough time getting my mind around the thought that the party was thinking: "Let's have a closed primary to keep crossover voting out and only allow people that actually registered as Republicans plus all the 'decline to state' if we know they were registered GOP in the past.
I don't know what the county clerks are like where you live, but where I live they aren't the types to do a lot of research before checking a radio box.

[HamiltonJay]

There you go, an end to the conspiracy nonsense story that was being hyped on Tues.... This one never passed the smell test.

Of course I’m sure the rabid “mccain must die” crowd won’t care, and keep shouting about the conspiracy anyway.

[NormsRevenge]

Not a surprise, The Ca GOP did all it could to cut the conservative candidates off at the knees the last couple elections..

[TankerKC]

Of course I’m sure the rabid “mccain must die” crowd won’t care, and keep shouting about the conspiracy anyway.

I suppose that the conspiracy folks are about as over-the-top with there theories as you are with the names you throw out. McCain must die? C'mon.