Complaints filed in the aftermath of Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council Election

If one thought that the "brouhaha" that was the Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council Election on June 12 would end anytime soon?? Then simply, CHALE!!!

Excerpts from the Eastern Group Publication Story.

Allegations of improper voting procedures and violations of polling-place regulations in the June 12 Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council election are being made in a complaint filed Tuesday with the Los Angeles City Clerk.

“We’re in the position right now that we’re trying to get the city clerk to check the election,” said Carmen M. Serrano, who ran for secretary of the council and lost. Other submitters of the complaint include her husband, Frank A. Serrano, who ran in the election as a community representative for a community-based organization (Sacred Heart Catholic Church) and lost, Jose Aguilar, who ran for an at-large area seat and won, and Hugo Pacheco, who ran for council president and lost.

The complaint alleges that there was no inclusive bilingual voting information and materials for the election, that voters 18 and over were discriminated against by the allowing of minors as young as 14 to vote, that campaign flyers advocating a slate of candidates were on display within the Lincoln High School auditorium polling location, that a memo with a Lincoln High School letterhead about the election was sent to Lincoln High School staff, and that some stakeholders were not provided with ballots, among other allegations. The complaints were to be sent to the City Clerk for review for violation of municipal, state, and federal voting laws. It has not been verified whether the City Clerk has received the complaint.

This response from Lincoln High School's Vera Padilla.

Vera Padilla, counselor at Lincoln, is the neighborhood council treasurer. She said that the stakeholder definition in Lincoln Heights includes children as young as 14 who attend school in the area, as well as people who shop or have bank accounts there.

“You can shop in Lincoln Heights, you can bank in Lincoln Heights, and there are your voters,” she said.

Padilla, who authored and distributed the memo named in the complaint, claimed that her distribution of the memo concerning the election to school faculty was within her job duties, which include distributing memos to faculty about various neighborhood and school-related functions.

Eastern Group Publications obtained a copy of the memo, dated June 10, along with the complaint. (Padilla offered to submit a copy of the memo to EGP, but it was not received by deadline).

The memo reads “Abraham Lincoln High School” and “Inter-Office Memorandum” in bold letters at the top. It was to Lincoln staff, from Vera Padilla, Career Advisor. The subject is Lincoln Heights Neighborhood Council Elections. It is not on letterhead stationery.
The memo begins by giving the time and place of the election. It urges voting, and reminds readers that all teachers, faculty, staff and students in grades nine thru twelve can vote. It then lists various donations from the Neighborhood Council to the school and the community, totaling over $168, 000 in value.

“This was my way, a reminder, to get out and vote, “ Padilla said. “To me, I did no wrong.”

You can read all five of the challenges filed with the City Clerk by linking here

Your thoughts............

Observations on June 12 Neighborhood Council Elections from someone who voted.....in each one!!

Doug Epperhart, member of the Coastal San Pedro Neighborhood Council is the definition of "dedication".

In his quest to ascertain the changes in the N.C. election process with the City Clerk running the Elections. Epperhart works his way from south to north. His full article "Everything but Hanging Chads" at "City Watch" can be read in full by linking here. Official results now avalible by linking here.

Excerpts below on each of the eight election sites.

First stop, Northwest San Pedro, 1:18 p.m.—I wrote down that I shopped in the area as the “factual basis” for being a stakeholder. No problem, no questions. I got to vote in all categories. One candidate for each office and no write-ins, making it very easy to choose—and I picked all the winners!

Next up, Wilmington, 2:10 p.m.—Three poll workers, one voter; the service was excellent. I asked if they had been given any criteria to determine whether people like me actually are stakeholders and what “factual basis” means. I was told they weren’t at liberty to talk about it.

Boyle Heights, 3:10 p.m.—I crossed paths with DONE general manager BongHwan Kim who stopped just long enough to say, “hi.” This is the first place I saw someone on the corner handing out campaign literature. This is also the first place I saw more than one other voter. Staff said there had a been a “steady flow” since the polls opened. I got to vote only for “at-large” candidates, but almost every office offered more than one name.

Lincoln Heights, 3:40 p.m.—The polling place was the lobby of Lincoln High’s auditorium. Lots and lots of students voting. The only place I was asked for an I.D. I got the entire 16-page ballot. Lots of competition in this election. The students all seemed to have a slate flyer. Tests are easy when you can use a cheat sheet. (Thanks to Vera Padilla, but back to Doug)

Greater Echo Park Elysian, 4:15 p.m.—I parked in front of the banner urging me to “Vote for Ida Talalla!” Poll workers told me it was O.K. because it was more than 100 feet from the entrance. Contested races in this election for everything except treasurer. Why doesn’t anybody ever want to be the treasurer?

Downtown Los Angeles, 4:47 p.m.—I saw Russ Brown out front of the Los Angeles Theater, where the voting was taking place. He said there were lines around the block during the first two hours and merchants complained customers couldn’t get in to their stores. No lines, but it was still busy when I got there.

Central Alameda, 5:45 p.m.—Candidate statements were front and center here. You couldn’t miss them. No lines, practically no voters. The ballot contained lots of blank spaces because hardly anybody signed up to run. There was a long list of write-ins, though. I was the first “affirmation” voter at this council, which seemed to greatly amuse the poll workers.

......and lastly,

CANNDU, 6:15 p.m.—So far, so good. I breezed through the process. I usually claimed stakeholder status based on spending money in a council’s area. Only at Greater Echo Park Elysian ask where specifically I had shopped and that only because they were trying to figure which district’s ballot to give me.

I was grilled at CANNDU. Where did I spend money? What was the address? After a lot of back and forth, we settled on buying gas at a station down the street ($4.43 a gallon, by far the cheapest price I’d seen all day).

Your thoughts appreciated.

Round Two of Neighborhood Council Elections schedule for June 21

Round Two of the City of Los Angeles Neighborhood Council Elections will take place this Saturday, June 21 in locations around the city.

Elections as administer by the City Clerk's Office will be held in the following Neighborhood Council areas,(click links to see list of candidates)

Greater Griffith Park (Donna Barstow has her recommendations on the blog "Griffith Park, Interrupted")

Hollywood Studio District

MacArthur Park

Mar Vista

Mid City WEST Community Council

Mid-Town North Hollywood

Wilshire Center/ Koreatown

In news from last week's elections, mail-in ballots were not counted in the unofficial votes total last week.

Further a canvass of the votes in Lincoln Heights and Greater Echo Park (WWG blogger Jenny Burman has thoughts on this election) will take place this morning at 9:00 AM at the City Clerk's Office located in the Piper Tech Complex.

.....and this about a certain candidate for the Greater Griffith Park Neighborhood Council.

YES - the big race is in the Greater Griffith Park NC. Nyla Arslanian, a woman who makes her money off of City arts projects, is trying to steal the Griffith Park-specific seat. She's running against our parks chairman and a parks committee member and is a LaBong ass-kisser of the highest order. I would love to investigate this person more carefully. She's already been identified as having conflicts of interest between her income and her previously representing Arts & Culture on the GGPNC board. Ms. Arslanian is the worst thing that could happen to Griffith Park. In the five or so years I've observed her, she's LaBong's YES GAL. Her lips are permanently afixed to his ample butt. Bad bad bad.

...and some background info.

Nyla Arslanian is Editor of Discover Hollywood Magazine and President of the Hollywood Arts Council. The Council was formed in 1978 to address the role the arts would play in Hollywood’s revitalization. The Councilcontinues to be involved to keep the arts at the forefront of community life. Highlights of the Hollywood Arts Council’s accomplishments throughthe years include the Children’s Festival of the Arts, outdoor art shows,promoting the wealth of arts activities available through DiscoverHollywood Magazine, the new upcoming Rock n Roll Pilgrimage Concert in August and its annual Charlie Awards Luncheon held in the beginning of theyear. Project S.O.A.R. (Students Overcoming All Risks), the Council’safter school program, provides over 2,000 3rd, 4th and 5th graders withquality art instruction and an opportunity to explore their own creativity.The Council relies on donations and its volunteers to carry out its programs. Everyone interested in the arts and in the unique culture of Hollywood is invited to join. The Hollywood Arts Council has emerged asthe voice for Hollywood's unique culture and a strong advocate for theimpact arts can have on the life of a community. The Council has renew edits dedication to promoting, nurturing and supporting the arts and isevolving to meet new challenges and opportunities.

Hmmm. "LaBong" working on the plants.......

City Clerk's response to Lincoln Heights complaints

The City Clerk has responded to the complaints as submitted by LHNC candidates Hugo Pacheco and Jose Aguilar.

Their complaints along with those from North Hollywood and now Echo Park paints a picture of an office ill perpare to conduct a election vested to them for the first time.

This comment was posted yesterday regarding the City Clerk's initial foray in running Neighborhood Council elections,

"Don't blame all this mess on anyone's neighborhood council.

There was a huge rush by the City Council to inject the Clerk into NC elections THIS same year - in part so they could glob up some of the old, unspent funds from the more dysfunction NCs to pay for the transition.

That was despite quite a bit of blowback from some councils that said we were rushing it, and should have started this in 2010, after the '09 municipal elections giving more time for them to study how these nearly 100 difference city groups work.

Plus, they're not even just doing trial runs with one or two to work out the kinks -- they jumped into handling dozens of very different groups in a short 3-month period.

Frankly I don't think there's a councilmember or GM in the city that could hold down even a middle manager's job in corporate America without getting pink-slipped or going bankrupt.

June 10, 2008 3:21 PM"

Back in Lincoln Heights, charges are flying about that Martha Riley is asking groups who received funding from the LHNC, for their votes to keep the flow of NC money to these groups.

Too bad that Lincoln Heights is no longer in CD 14!!

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