TRANSIT TALK-I’m home again, for a few minutes at least. Hey, cut me some slack; have you ever heard of snow and ice? It’s summer and to fully appreciate the places I’ve been, this is the best time of the year to be there. 

As usually happens when I spend time soaking up the energy of great cities, I feel enriched and inspired to bring some of those lessons home to Los Angeles. My latest trip took me to New York, Chicago and Madison, Wisconsin. And all three cities get a shout out for re-envisioning and making great things happen in their streets, open spaces or transit. 

What New York has done with its Hudson River waterfront and extension of the 7 Train west to the Hudson Yards  is legendary, and Madison is practically Mecca to a bike rider. 

Away from Los Angeles, It was a week of contrasts, a chance to scope out the most expensive transit improvement -- the Calatrava station at New York’s World Trade Center site -- and the most basic of massive domestic urban transit systems, Chicago’s seemingly ubiquitous L. 

My biggest shout out goes to the much maligned city of Chicago. Why do people hate on Chicago? For all that city’s violent crime, failing schools and missteps of its tone deaf mayor, Chicago is awesome, to use a word I can’t believe I just uttered, given my age. 

Between some of the world’s finest urban architecture, beautiful parks, great transit and bike share, terrific food and music, vibrant neighborhoods and a lake the size of an ocean, I’ll take it. 

In light of the terrible news of the past two weeks, how great it is to have something homegrown and American Made to celebrate. 

Whoever would have thought we would live to see the same sort of shameful attacks on the Black Lives Matter movement that plagued this country back in 1968? 

Attention No Faux News and you other haters: a disciplined civil disobedience movement à la SNCC and Dr. King himself did not murder five police officers in Dallas. RIP the officers as well as Philando Castile and Alton Sterling. We are better as a country than the side of things we have seen as of late. 

But let’s get back to Chicago. Won’t you please come to Chicago?  

I remember that it gets cold in the Windy City, as in really cold, but the views south from the Lincoln Park Nature Boardwalk and north and west from The Field Museum and Adler Planetarium in Grant Park are breathtaking urban landscapes (photo above) that rival anything one finds on either coast. 

Given the week’s news, I had second thoughts about leaving behind bucolic Madison, my free summer Bcycle bikeshare membership and chair near the stage on The Terrace at the University of Wisconsin Memorial Union. The brats and beer and open mic night on Lake Mendota alone almost justified the out-of-state tuition at one of the Country’s finest public (and private) universities. And that’s even after years of Scott Walker’s shameful efforts to eviscerate The Wisconsin Ideal.  

Though I was sorry to miss the opening day of Bike Metro, LA’s new bikeshare program, Bcycle, Madison’s protected bike lanes and its lakeside paths helped me appreciate the significance of bikeshare’s arrival in Los Angeles as nothing short of transformational. It’s a shot in the arm for the growing chorus of support for complete streets in Southern California. 

After the time I spent in Madison, Chicago beckoned me. The “express” Van Galder bus from Madison hit a traffic wall around Austin and Cicero. But that was okay for me as there were CTA Blue Line tracks running down the middle of the Eisenhower Expressway. Sure, the train line is not pretty and standing on those platforms in the winter must be brutal, but let’s focus on the positive; the line exists and offers functional, frequent 24/7 transit to thousands of daily riders. 

In spite of Chicago’s traffic, reminiscent of any hour on the 5, 405, 10, 110, 605, 710 (need I go on?) we eventually made it to The Loop where the real fun started at Chicago’s Union Station. A walk/architectural tour through The Loop of the big shouldered city and along the Chicago River (with kayakers!) never disappoints. 

With the quiet Expo Line to Santa Monica in mind, I have a soft spot in my heart for the noisy, gritty L, a largely bare bones urban transit system that rivals New York’s bursting at the seams behemoth. If Chicago was building the L today, it would never get its basic design past the public and the Federal Transit Administration. But there it is, in all its Loop-centric glory, taking riders nearly everywhere in the sprawling city. 

All over Chicago, I saw plenty of rust and the lines are pretty noisy at times. But, assuming the tracks and trains are safe, to an inveterate transit fan, the rattles and rust are small prices to pay for the frequency that we can only dream of for our own LA Metro. 

For a “city junkie,” there is almost nothing like riding the L through The Loop and out into Chicago’s vibrant neighborhoods. 

On the active transportation front, Chicago’s robust Divvy bikeshare program is super popular, especially near the Lake and parks, making it hard to find a bike at some of the stations. 

The takeaway for LA is: build out our transit fast and within budget and give Angelenos the frequency they need and the system will land discretionary riders who don’t even think about driving. This is what LA Metro’s November Ballot Initiative is all about and why we need to vote for it early and often as they would in Chicago. 

Just don’t get me started about the fact that Chicago’s Blue Line goes all the way to O’Hare, not just nearby, requiring a second ride. 

Since I probably sound like a PR flack for Chicago, I should add that I saw some annoying things there like Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s name on the sign at Bixler Playlot Park in Hyde Park, as if Rahm paid for the playground himself. 

In LA, of course, we would never put the name of a living County Supervisor on the name of a regional park. Never! Right? 

And I am not so nearsighted that I missed the resilient blight and crime that plagues much of Chiraq’s South Side and West Side. 

But in Chicago, like in New York, I also saw a vibrant city where races mix, at least on the L and in the street and parks along the Lake. 

LA fascinates me because its density and clash of dreams and cultures creates a built environment that is greater than the sum of its parts. Our cousins in Chicago and Madison and New York are also doing great things that can teach us a thing or two about how to build and rebuild cities that work. 

Now let’s get out and vote. 

(Joel Epstein is a senior advisor to companies, law firms, foundations and public initiatives on communications strategy, corporate social responsibility (CSR), recruiting and outreach. He is a contributor to CityWatch and can be contacted at [email protected].) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THE CITY-All cultures have death rituals. America’s is familiar to all. We are shocked when people are killed. Yes, shocked! It hasn’t happened in, well, maybe a few weeks. And we’re shocked that such a thing can happen in America. 

On June 12, 2016, Omar Mateen guns down 49 people inside a gay night club and less than a month later, on July 7, 2016, Micah Xavier Johnson guns down five police officers in Dallas. In between, we had daily murders across the nation including what appears to be two executions by police officers – victims Alton Sterling and Philando Castile. 

Out come the votive candles, the tears, the wailing, the recriminations – oh, it is all so well scripted. We have to hurry up and finish our death ritual over the Dallas police death because in our predatory violent culture, the next mass murder is in the making. 

Americans need to take stock of their culture and admit some things to themselves.

(1) We live in a violent predatory culture. 

(2) We love our violent predatory culture. 

(3) We have no intention of changing our violent predatory culture. 

The habitual murders reflect our collective consciousness. Other countries don’t have similar violence, but then they’re pussies. Just ask Donald Trump. Just ask the NRA which insists that the answer to gun violence is more gun violence. Who agrees with the NRA? The United States Congress. Yes, we ourselves and the culture which we have fashioned for ourselves are the problem. 

Gun control, however, is a silly place to start. No predatory culture will give up its best weapon to kill other people. We cannot even stop insane people and terrorists from buying guns. Besides, railing against too many guns is merely one obligatory part of the Death Ritual. 

As long as we support a predatory culture where the wealthy rape the poor, gun violence will be with us every day, 365 days per year. 

What is a predatory culture and how do we know we live in one? 

If your country allows a handful of Wall Street investment bankers crash the world economy and your President’s response is to give them trillions of dollars, you live in a predatory country. 

If your country locks up more people for longer periods of time than any other industrialized nation, you live in a predatory country. 

If your country believes that adequate health care is a privilege for the wealthy, you live in a predatory county. 

If 60% of the people in your country think the death penalty is a good thing, you live in a predatory country. 

If you live in a city which destroys 20,000 rent-controlled apartments and then proposes to give $1.2 billion to the millionaires who tore down the poor people’s homes, you live in a predatory city. 

Recently, we saw the LA City Council once again unanimously approve the destruction of poor people homes so that the Cherokee Apartments could be turned into a boutique hotel. 

Right now Councilmember Krekorian, recently famous for his needless destruction of Marilyn Monroe’s Valley Village home (photo above), is now showing more of his sadistic streak with the demolition of more Valley Village homes at the intersection of Hermitage and Weddington. 

Let’s be very clear about this project. It will demolish long time Valley Village homes in order to make way for tax shelters for the rich and famous. Few Angelenos have heard about this most recent scam where established homes are destroyed, and in their place, we have In-Fill projects of so-called single family homes (small lot subdivisions), which are nothing more than apartments constructed on top of garages. 

The finances behind these frauds took a while to reveal itself. Since Wall Street has soured on the glut of large apartment complexes in Los Angeles, Garcetti, Krekorian, O’Farrell and others have devised a new scam. They still construct apartments, but they call them Small Lot development so that each apartment is treated as if it were a single family home. This charade allows each apartment to be sold individually as a tax shelter. 

The key to a tax shelter is that it loses money. That loss is beneficial to millionaires who need write-offs against profits elsewhere in their portfolios. An entire apartment complex is too large and apartments may not be legally sold as separate entities. Thus, we have the new scam, i.e. the apartments are designed to be standing units so that they can be sold to non-investors who need tax write offs. 

Thus, Krekorian’s plan is based on the sadistic impulse to destroy people’s homes so that his buddies can build tax shelters for the world’s wealthy. 

In our predatory culture, we see nothing wrong with that. Angelenos do not care that their City Hall is crimogenic and the LA City Council is run as a criminal enterprise.  If we will not stop Garcetti’s rampage on the poor after 20,000 rent-controlled units were destroyed, if we will not stop O’Farrell as he rewards the Cherokee Hotel for making the elderly, disabled and poor into the homeless, if we will not stop Krekorian in his ravaging of Valley Village, then we are the supporters of the predatory culture which routinely gives rise to these mass murders. 

Mark your calendars. The next mass murder has been penciled in for around August 10̀-20th, during which time, LA will have made a hundred or so more people homeless. 

Or we could reject the City’s sadistic predatory culture which daily destroys more of our homes, making more Angelenos homeless. 

We can Choose Life or continue the American Death Ritual.

(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Graphic credit: LA Curbed. Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

EXPOSED—Want to know who has the most to gain/lose in politics? Follow the money. MapLight has done that for us on California’s ballot measures. Who’s ‘for’ the legalization of pot? Who’s against it? Keep reading.

1 — There are 17 measures that have qualified for California’s November ballot, covering everything from death and taxes to sex, drugs, and guns.

2 — Initiative campaigns have already raised about $185 million.

3 — The biggest spender so far is the pharmaceutical industry. It has contributed $70 million — or 38 percent of all the money raised for ballot measures so far — to fight Proposition 61, which would limit the prices state agencies pay for prescription drugs.

4 — Unions, school administrators, and the California Association of Hospitals and Health Systems have given $19 million to the campaign for Proposition 55, which would extend an income tax increase on people earning more than $250,000 a year.

5 — Tom Steyer, a billionaire and possible Democratic contender for governor in 2018, has contributed $1 million to support Proposition 56. The measure would increase the cigarette tax by $2 per pack.

6 — Some big names in Silicon Valley, including Netflix CEO Reed Hastings, Paul Graham of Y Combinator, and Marc Benioff of Salesforce have given money to support Proposition 62, a measure that would repeal the death penalty and replace it with life in prison without the possibility of parole.

7 — A competing measure, Proposition 66 is aimed at eliminating delays in carrying out the death penalty by imposing time limits on legal reviews of capital convictions. It has the support of law enforcement groups.

8 — Supporters of Proposition 64, a measure to legalize marijuana, have raised over $7 million. Napster founder Sean Parker has contributed about $2.8 million.

9 — The committee opposed to legalizing pot, the Coalition for Responsible Drug Policies, Sponsored by California Public Safety Institute, has raised $141,000.

10 — A measure requiring actors in adult films to wear condoms, Proposition 60, has raised more than $1.6 million from its only financial supporter, the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.

Methodology:
MapLight analysis of campaign contributions to the ballot measure committees associated with California’s November 2016 ballot measures. All numbers are based on latest data made available by the California Secretary of State as of July 7, 2016.

(Bret Hendry is the Communications Manager at MapLight.) 

-cw

CALWATCHDOG--New polling and a surprise endorsement light up Loretta Sanchez’s quest for the U.S. Senate — but both also illustrate the challenges ahead. 

Sanchez — a Democratic congresswoman from Orange County — is hoping to cobble together enough votes from a mix of Latinos, Republicans, independents and Democrats to carry her past Democratic Attorney General Kamala Harris, the frontrunner. 

Harris won first place in the June primary by a wide margin — 40 percent to 19 percent — with the vote split between 34 candidates. Polling released Friday gives a clearer picture of how the two candidates stack up head to head, showing Harris in a comfortable, yet surmountable, lead.

And while the polling suggests Sanchez still faces significant difficulties winning over Republicans, Hugh Hewitt, a popular conservative radio host from Orange County, endorsed her on his show on Thursday, giving Sanchez her second high-profile Republican endorsement since the primary. 

POLLING--To win, Sanchez will likely need around a third of Democrats, the vast majority of Latinos and more than half of independents and Republicans to cast their ballots for her. 

A Field Poll released Friday showed Harris with a 15-point lead (39 percent to 24 percent). The good news for Sanchez was that 22 percent of respondents were undecided, the bad news was that 15 percent — a large portion of which were Republicans — said they’d vote for neither. 

Harris led among voters in nearly every category, including among Republicans, independents and Southern California voters (Harris is from the Bay Area). 

Sanchez, however, had a strong lead among Latinos, a nice lead among voters ages 18 to 39, and a slight lead among voters making less than $40,000 annually. 

Republicans--Perhaps the most troubling data point for Sanchez was the 31 percent of Republicans who said they wouldn’t vote in the Senate race, essentially saying they would just skip over that race on the ballot without one of their own to choose from. 

Mike Madrid, a Republican consultant who specializes in Latino issues, said he doubted the Republican undervote will be as “significant as other Democrat demographics” and believes Sanchez has a chance to win in November. 

“I think there’s a very real shot,” Madrid said. “Difficult, certainly; but absolutely possible.” 

Fragile coalition--Sanchez walks a fine line in appealing to Latinos and Republicans, as the former is increasingly dissatisfied with the latter. 

And she can’t veer too far to the right and hope to win a large chunk of Democrats or vice versa. After all, Sanchez is still a partisan Democrat and has strong support from Democratic lawmakers and constituencies, including unions.  

While some Republican insiders have reached out to Sanchez, introducing her to donors and voters behind closed doors, few are willing to make overt displays of support. 

Endorsements--Republicans like Hewitt who have come out in support of Sanchez give cover to other Republicans who may have a tough time voting for a Democrat by finding her to be the moderate candidate, or at least the lesser of two evils. 

The Libertarian-leaning Orange County Register Editorial Board endorsed Sanchez during the primary (while Republicans were still in the race), primarily for voting against the Iraq War in 2003, for voting against the PATRIOT ACT (which expanded the federal government’s use of surveillance against U.S. citizens), and for opposing the 2008 bank bailout. 

Hewitt called her the more “moderate” of the two candidates and said he would occasionally find consensus with Sanchez in military and defense issues — Sanchez sits on the House Armed Services Committee and the House Homeland Security Committee.  

“You and I are not going to agree a lot, but occasionally, we’re going to agree on Armed Services and some Defense appropriation issues,” Hewitt told Sanchez on air Thursday. “I’m not going to agree with your opponent ever.” 

In June, Richard Riordan, the former Republican Mayor of Los Angeles, endorsed Sanchez for her opposition to the Iraq War and for her ability to work across the partisan aisle to pass legislation. 

Congressional Quarterly recently listed Sanchez as one of the 25 most influential women in Washington, for being a “debate shaper and swing vote.” For the majority of her nearly two decades in Congress, she’s been in the minority party, meaning most accomplishments have been made with an element of compromise. 

“I’ve known Loretta Sanchez for many years, she is tough and not afraid to take a stand on important issues,” Riordan said at the time. “(Sanchez) knows how to work with Democrats, Republicans, and Independents.” 

Sanchez actually used to be a Republican, dating back to high school in Anaheim. But similar to Latinos today repulsed from the Republican Party by its presumptive presidential nominee, Sanchez switched when she heard former Republican presidential candidate Pat Buchanan warn of the “illegal invasion” of Mexicans coming across the country’s southern border, according to the Los Angeles Times. 

Uphill climb--Even if Sanchez can unite behind her Republicans, Latinos, independents and leftover Democrats, she still faces an opponent in Harris who has statewide name recognition and the full backing of the Democratic establishment, which in California has so often proven to be enough.  

For every play she makes for one group, she risks alienating voters of another group. Democratic consultant Steve Maviglio said, for example, attacking Harris, the attorney general, as being soft on crime was a decent strategy, but risks losing appeal among progressives. 

And despite Sanchez’s moderate profile as a member of the fiscally conservative Blue Dog Caucus and her independent streak on larger issues, she still has a fairly liberal voting record in the House.

“It’s an uphill climb,” said Maviglio. “What credentials does Loretta Sanchez have to appeal to Republicans? She’s been a partisan Democrat in the House. Is she less liberal than Kamala Harris? Only by a hair. That’s not a convincing argument.”

(Matt Fleming writes for CalWatchdog … where this piece was first posted.)

-cw

PLATKIN ON PLANNING-The City Planning Commission hearing on amendments to the two citywide mansionization ordinances – the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance (BMO) and the Baseline Hillside Ordinance (BHO) -- took place on Thursday, July 14, 2016. To get a full report on what transpired, please open this link.  

If you are concerned about mansionization -- the hasty and often illegal demolition of smaller, less expensive houses to clear building pads for pricey, oversized, out-of-character McMansions -- then these amendments are the big one. In Los Angeles, the mansionization process began in the Beverly Grove neighborhood, where I live, over a decade ago, but has since spread over the entire city. Contractors have bulldozed thousands of well-priced, middle class homes to make way for a crowd with apparently with more money than taste. 

With plenty of City Council and City Planning Department support behind them, the investors, contractors, and realtors in the mansionization business have been able to neutralize six previous attempts to stop McMansions by smothering them in loopholes. As a result, there has not even been a blip in the number of affordable houses demolished and then replaced by extremely expensive, intrusive monster houses in more and more LA neighborhoods. 

In this relentless cycle of real estate speculation, the only areas able to protect neighborhood character and scale are about 30 Historical Preservation Overlay Zones (e.g. Hancock Park), several residential Specific Plans (e.g. Mount Washington), and four neighborhoods with Residential Floor Area Districts (e.g., Beverly Grove).

While important, these zoning overlay ordinances only shield small areas. They oil loud squeaky wheels so truly awful planning practices can roll through the rest of Los Angeles unperturbed by multiple anti-mansionization policies in adopted and approved city planning documents. 

While these local anti-mansionization ordinances cannot unring a bell, they can at least protect the remaining homes in a handful of neighborhoods. But that also means that the rest of Los Angeles will not have dependable protection against mansionization until the City Council adopts a strong, citywide anti-mansionization ordinance. The current BMO-BHO amendments could finally provide that protection, but it will be a knock down, drag out fight over the coming months. Many neighborhood David’s are already facing off against a small army of Philistines, who are in league with City Hall decision makers taken in by the mansionizers’ frequently repeated but always debunked talking points.  

Breaking news: The City Planning Department recently issued their staff report for the Thursday hearing, and it does have some good points: 

• It recommends reducing by-right FAR from 0.50 to 0.45 on R1 lots of less than 7,500 square feet. 

• It calls for the full elimination of the exemption for covered porches, patios, and breezeways. 

• It calls for public hearings for all waivers (10% Zoning Administrator Adjustments) decided by the Department of City Planning. 

But the staff report falls far short in other key ways: 

• In hundreds of public comments and letters, Angelinos living in “the flats” identified the exclusion of attached garages from a house’s floor area (a 400 square foot freebie for mansionizers) as the single most damaging loophole. Even the City Planning staff report concedes that this has been “one of the most requested changes” and that if included, it would encourage detached garages with driveways that “provide increased separation between houses.” We would also add that the elimination of this loophole results in smaller houses. 

• But city planners recommend keeping the exemption for attached garage space, even though the City Council expressly directed City Planning to eliminate all loopholes that promoted mansionization. 

• Communities in the hillsides that are covered by the Hillside Mansionization Ordinance asked, above all, that the City drop the 1,000 square foot floor area minimum for non-conforming lots and tighten grading and hauling allowances. 

But city planners recommend keeping the 1,000 square foot minimum, as well as excessive grading and hauling allowances. 

Communities with larger lots (RA, RS, and RE zones), such as Tarzana, first and foremost requested that the City eliminate the same square footage bonus loopholes in their zones that they removed in R1 zones. 

But the city planners recommended keeping these bonuses, asserting that larger lot sizes and smaller FARs “make these zones better able to accommodate” the bonuses/loopholes. The bigger question, why there should even be a secret (ministerial) process to enlarge houses above their initial by-right size without a public, discretionary process, was, of course, not asked and not answered. 

Finally, all LA neighborhoods repeatedly requested that City Hall keep the amended mansionization ordinances as short, straightforward, and enforceable as possible. They knew, from bitter first hand experience, that LA’s Department of Building and Safety cannot understand and/or will not enforce the most basic mansionization provisions, such as the required posting of demolition and construction permits. They know that anything exceeding a barebones mansionization ordinance will be easily gamed by the mansionizers. 

They also realized that the inclusion of new design features lifted from re:code LA, encroachment planes and side wall articulation, are nothing more than lipstick on a pig. These are complicated, hard-to-enforce design provisions whose rationale, camouflaging bloated houses, is a myth. They are no different than the existing loopholes that the Council ordered City Planning to eliminate from the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance because they promoted mansionization. The locals know these design gimmicks utterly failed over the past eight years, and they will not work if again forced upon LA’s neighborhoods. Like before, they are nothing more than a recipe for further mansionization pretending to be fancy architectural doodads.

The first draft of the current BMO/BHO amendments in October 2015 received over 600 responses, and the Planning Department reported that these comments favored tighter limits on McMansions by a margin of almost 4-to-1. The second draft drew over 1000 responses, and there is no reason to think that public sentiment suddenly changed in favor of loopholes, whether old or new. 

But the Planning Department’s summary of “the most representative comments” pairs every objection to its reinstatement of loopholes with an opposing comment, while leaving out any mention of relative frequency, the actual validity of claims and counter-claims, and the instructions of the City Council. 

At the hearing on Thursday, speculators and realtors were expected to be out in force. Some of them have a simple, short-term outlook based on making a quick buck, regardless of the consequences for other people. Others are simply so ignorant they have not noticed that the neighborhoods with the highest property values are those, like the HPOZ’s, that protect neighborhood character. Finally, others clothe their greed in long-winded architectural discourses that boil down to “wear shirts with vertical stripes if you want to appear thinner.”
NEXT STEPS: We all know what we need to do: Show up at the hearing!  And, after the hearing, submit testimony directly to the City Planning Department, the City Planning Commission, and the City Council. This way, your testimony will be contained in the official file forwarded to the City Council’s Planning and Land Use Committee (PLUM) for its public hearing on the same amendments. Plus, you can also present your testimony again at the PLUM hearing. These are the City of LA staff that you should contact. Remember to include CF 14-0656 in the subject line. 

City Planning Commission: [email protected]

City Council PLUM Committee: [email protected]

Tom Rothmann:   [email protected]

Nicholas Marrakech: [email protected]

Phyllis Nathanson:   [email protected] 

Niall Huffman: [email protected]

Another round of emailed public testimony will show support for meaningful reform of LA’s repeatedly flawed efforts to stop mansionization. 

For further information on the next stages in the adoption process, this website will have all the information you need.

(Dick Platkin is a former LA City Planner who reports on local planning issues for City Watch. He welcomes comment and corrections at [email protected]. He also thanks Shelley Wagers, who wrote an earlier version of this column.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.

THIS IS WHAT I KNOW-Just days before the delegates arrive in Cleveland for the GOP convention and less than two weeks before the Democrats gather in Philadelphia, California officials have been busy certifying the over 8.5 million ballots cast last month. Voters and local election officials alike have been scratching their heads about confusing rules and overlapping that occurred during the primary voting process. 

Most complaints stem from the dissimilar rules governing both presidential and statewide elections. Primaries for state offices are open; voters can choose candidates across party lines. Rules for the presidential primary differ and are governed by the political party.

Independent (no party preference) voters were able to vote for either Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders in the Democratic primary but were not permitted to vote in the GOP primary. Independent voters were required by the Democratic Party to use a designated “crossover” ballot which did not include a vote for the party’s governing committee. This special ballot was only presented to unaffiliated voters if they asked for it. 

Furthermore, local election officials were held to enforcing the rules – and procedures were inconsistent from county to county. Training for poll workers isn’t even consistent throughout the state. Activists have alleged that independent voters may not have had the chance to vote for Sanders. Election Day reports pointed out a number of “polling place flash points” where poll workers either gave the wrong advice or weren’t using the latest roster of registered voters. 

After there were some suspected uncounted provisional ballots in other states, Sanders supporters in California used social media to inform people to refuse provisional ballots. At the same time, election officials noted the state election law gives wide discretion to accept provisional ballots. Reports from Contra Costa County concluded eighty-eight percent of the county’s provisional ballots were counted. Eighty-seven percent of Los Angeles County’s over 268,000 provisional ballots were counted. 

In the days following the June 7 primary, more private citizens than usual were showing up to watch over the tallying of provisional ballots and in San Diego, social media activists accused election workers of changing provisional ballots. 

Snafus happened when voters showed up at different polling places than where they were registered and ended up mistakenly voting for down-ticket races for which they weren’t eligible to vote. In San Diego, workers redacted those particular votes with white correction tape, leaving in place the votes for president and U.S. Senate. In other counties, election workers were copying the voter’s choices to a clear ballot, similar to what happens with damaged ballots. An activist group in San Diego has filed a lawsuit claiming that the procedures followed to recount the required manual recount of one percent of the ballots were incorrect. 

Additional problems occurred when voters who don’t typically go to the polls were confused about their party affiliation. For example, some voters believed they were registered independents (who could receive provisional ballots for the presidential primary) but were, in reality, members of California’s American Independent Party. 

In Riverside County, allegations were levied that changes may have been tampered with in the state’s online registration portal to change part affiliation, charges Secretary of State Alex Padilla denies. 

Election changes in 2014 allow for completed vote-by-mail ballots to arrive as late as 72 hours after the polls close, provided they are postmarked on Election Day. This typically causes late counting in less populated counties. 

In elections with such a wide array of ballots by both party affiliation and language, as well as such large numbers of candidates like the 34 primary candidates for the U.S. Senate race in California, voting systems need to be updated. More money is needed to expand voter communications and to pay for mandated procedures to ensure fair, uniform elections and equal treatment of voters throughout the state.

(Beth Cone Kramer is a successful Los Angeles writer and a columnist for CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.