Ballot problems mount in Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council Election

Is this picture indicative of why we will need a "Million Trees" in Los Angeles?

Because we will have to harvest half of them in the future to make up for the amount of paper wasted by the City Clerks Office in producing ballots for the up coming Neighborhood Council Election, Thursday in Lincoln Heights, Boyle Heights, Greater Griffith Park and other areas of the city.

The picture on the left is of the ballot package that was sent to a voter in Lincoln Heights. This what a person receives if one wishes to vote by mail or "absentee".

Notice the amount of color coded ballots that one must complete, then stuff into the little pink envelope located in the upper right of the photo.

Once you are done "stuffing the vote" it will cost you nearly a "half gallon of gas money" (87 octane) to mail your ballot to the City Clerk. FYI, the meter postage on the envelope that contain this ballot package was $1.30.

But many others who chose to vote by mail did not receive the complete ballot package. This was validated by looking again at the meter postage that showed a postage of 50 cents.

It should be noted that this is the first Neighborhood Council Election Cycle being done under the auspices of the City Clerk office. But with the amount of problems mounting in this one area, there is a high probability that voters who chose to vote by mail will be disenfranchised in this election.

The City clerk should give strong consideration to postponing this election in the LHNC area until questions about mail in ballots and other issues such as ADA compliance are resolved.

***Just receive e-mail from Mayor Sam stating that there are ballot problems in North Hollywood***

Complaint letter to the City Clerk.

Ms. Taylor
Chief of Elections Division
City of Los Angeles Office of the City Clerk
Los Angeles, CA
Dear Mr. Taylor,

This is a petition that the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council Elections scheduled for this Thursday June 12, 2008 be postponed until all the following issues, discussed today with Ms. Sharon Lee and Mr. Isaias Cantu, are resolved in favor of the stakeholders:

Ballots are incomplete. Dozens of stakeholders have communicated receiving different quantities of ballots in one, two or three envelopes.

The bi-lingual instructions are not complete, as well as incorrectly translated.
Some adult ballots included the youth ballot.

Mr. Cantu states that he knows of only 60 ballots that were incomplete. That he has a list your personnel is using to contact the shorted stakeholders. To date your personnel have not contacted any of the stakeholders known to me who received incomplete ballots.

We are requesting that the list be provided to us in order make sure that they received their ballots.

We are also concerned that many stakeholders have not received their ballots or notification that their applications have been rejected.

Mr. Cantu stated that your personnel were using a check off list to mail out the incomplete ballots, if this is the case then why would the check off list not include the entire number of ballots. Its difficult to imagine that he only caught this after 60 had been mailed out.

The mailing of ballots occurred with two different types of envelopes some were in preprinted "Los Angeles City Clerk Election Division City of Los Angeles Voting Materials Enclosed" stamped "Urgent", others were on regular labeled envelopes stamped only "Rush' which some could consider junk mail.

For those identified second envelope deliveries there were no explanations as to why they were receiving a second set of ballots, if this were a second complete set or incomplete set, what to fill out, what to do with them and no further explanation that they return them back to the polling place or the election division.

The instructions included on the bilingual Vote-By-Mail Instructions stated that #8 All Vote-By-Mail ballots must be received (not postmarked) by the Election Division by: 5:00 p.m., on Thursday, June 12, 2008, but it gives no address or map as to where the Election Division or polling place is located. Mr. Cantu stated that its self explanatory since it was printed on the outside of the return envelope. Closer inspection of the envelopes reveal that the address on the return envelope is : City Clerk Election Division: Attn: Vote-By-Mail for the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council, P.O. Box 54377, Los Angeles, CA 90054-0377. This questions Mr. Cantu knowledge of his own process.

We complained to Mr. Cantu that the return envelope provided by your division could not easily accommodate the entire number of ballots. In order to show us how easy it could be done he gave a rather embarrassing demonstration on how to stuff the envelopes which he himself had difficulty in doing. It was further pointed out to him even though he has youthful dexterity how could he reasonably expect for a elderly or disabled person to stuff the envelope when he was challenged in his own process. He had no answer.

The current system of vote-by-mail does not offer sufficient anonymity as to how an absentee voter voted. This could also offer an opportunity for someone so inclined to invalidate a legitimate vote

There is insufficient bilingual instructions on the process of signing or allowing a third part to return the ballot.

These reasons speak loudly to the incompetence of this election process. Every stakeholder has the right to be treated equally. No stakeholder should be relegated to second class citizenship status due to the inability of your division to properly plan and implement a uniform election process.

Mr. Cantu's statement that the only reason that there was a mix up in the process was because there are two Neighborhood Councils with "Heights" in their name. Yet he goes on the state that there is another Neighborhood Council that is facing similar problems but their name does not have "Heights" in it. His explanation is very difficult to accept.

Mr. Cantu admitted to not adequately supervising his staff by claiming that he only became aware of the mailing errors as a result of him walking by the area where the ballots were being stuffed. Mr. Cantu knows having been previously involved in the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council Elections that the stakeholders of Lincoln Heights were looking forward to having a properly administered election by the City Clerk. How could he could be so negligent by not giving complete and accurate instructions to his staff on how to properly complete the task. He even mentioned the contentious nature of complaints leading up to these events. This should have been a warning flag that it was extremely important that management stay on top of this election to allay further complaints.

Mr. Cantu further suggests that we should be tolerant, accepting and forgiving of this flawed process only because it is the first time that your office has handled a Neighborhood Council Election, isn't this more of a reason to be even more diligent of the process.

When asked what remedy we would accept, there is no other than that of postponing this election until all issues are resolved.

We are requesting an immediate resolution because we will be going forward to present our concerns at the earliest scheduled meeting of the City Council should these concerns not be addressed in a timely manner.
Sincerely,

Edward M. Granados

Jose Aguilar