How To Run Elections

The Wall Street Journal has a column on the vote counting in the election for California Attorney General.

Columnist John Fund writes:

The race to determine who will be the attorney general of California is still too close to call. Democrat Kamala Harris, San Francisco's district attorney, leads Republican Steve Cooley, the DA for Los Angeles County, by 31,000 votes out of nearly nine million cast. And there are more than 750,000 ballots left to count.

The tabulation process has led to a full-fledged food fight between the candidates and has roped in Dean Logan, the controversial voter registrar of Los Angeles County. Ms. Harris claims that Cooley officials have crowded election workers "and aggressively attempt(ed) to have ballots disqualified" in Los Angeles County. Cooley aides counter that election workers in Los Angeles are being far too sloppy in comparing signatures on provisional ballots with voter registration cards on file for that person. They allege that in some instances no comparison is being made.

Attorneys for Mr. Cooley also complain that county workers are contacting voters by phone to fill out incomplete voter registration forms in order that their provisional ballots can be made legal, a step that's not part of the county's written procedures for counting ballots. They also claim that Mr. Logan's staff has held private meetings with Harris representatives and given them access to rejected provisional ballots.

I do not know anything about this and for all I know, the LA election officials are doing a great job despite the criticism above.

I do want to point out that that Los Angeles County doesn’t run elections like we do in New York. They run them the way that many reformers and editorial boards say it should be done here.

Logan is professional elections administrator, who previously worked In Washington State appointed by the County Board of Supervisors after a national search. And election workers in LA County are also not hacks appointed by the political parties. They are civil servants who have to pass a test to get hired.

I wonder how LA voters think their non-political voting system is working.

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