Results tagged “supertuesday”

In late May, HBO premiered it's original movie Recount, something this author thinks is an award worthy flick. It looks into the 2000 election woes in Florida, something the film does extremely well (it's on HBO Demand if you missed it). And if the Sunshine State's rainy month in the spotlight was not enough, Super Tuesday 2008 in California had its own troubles (fortunately, a good portion was corrected).

Who looks and studies the sample ballot? We all know how to vote, right? Well, after Super Tuesday's "double bubble" controversy (which was thankfully solved for the most part), it might be good to brush up on those bubble filling skills. And LAist Featured Photos contributor coffeextv found this statement upon looking through the sample ballot: "Shall Los Angeles County be declared the sun and leisure capitol of the world?"

First, let's reemphasize the good news from last week, as reported by David Dayen at Calitics: "47,153 "double bubble" votes were counted in Los Angeles County. The expectation on the day of the election was that none of these ballots from decline to state voters would be counted, but the pressure put on by the Courage Campaign and other groups led to this result."

*Update 12:03 p.m.: Hillary Clinton is now the declared winner in Texas according to the LA Times. They also have a complete breakdown, state by state, for all the state primaries including yesterday

Not that we did not know already, but now it is official: Mike Huckabee announced shortly before 6:30 p.m. PST that he is dropping out of the race. The presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain is expected to hold his victory speech later tonight in Dallas (UPDATE: McCain began his victory speech at 6:48 p.m. PST -- "Stand up and fight for America, the contest begins tonight" MSNBC live on air reports that his teleprompter failed during the speech).

The Daily Breeze has the low-down on the latest from Super Tuesday's ugly non-partisan voting mishap where nearly 50,000 votes went uncounted because of a tricky "double bubble" on ballots. Los Angeles County registrar Dean Logan has announced more than 50% of uncounted votes will be counted. Here are the technical details:

After discovering a massive Shepard Fairey-designed Obama print off Sunset yesterday, we went hunting for the background story, which led straight to the artist himself.

It's better news than yesterday's estimate of 100,000 votes not to be counted. In a LA Times article today, acting County Registrar, Dean Logan, was very honest and straightforward about the situation that took place last Tuesday: "We want voters to know that we hear loud and clear that this ballot layout is confusing and we need to identify a less confusing method for crossover voting for future primaries," he told the Times.

An Op-Ed follow up to this morning's news...

Both the Democrat and American Independent parties held open primaries on Super Tuesday. Voters who declined to state an affiliation were handed a "nonpartisan" ballot and were allowed to select a presidential candidate in either of the open primaries.

Last night, LAist had a spot on the red carpet of the Key Club in West Hollywood, host of The Roots Jam Session sponsored by Rock the Vote, Okayplayer and Keldof.

href="http://torontoist.com/2008/02/phototo_snowbal.php">photographing a big, organized snowball fight.

Mitt Romney, a Republican Governor from a Democratic state, quit the presidential race today following huge gains made by John McCain on Super Tuesday.

Through the presidential election in November, MTV has “Choose or Lose” citizen journalists in twenty-three states to cover the campaign. Here is the Colorado street team member interviewing Academy Award winner Forest Whitaker on the campaign trail for Barack Obama in Boulder, CO on Monday.

I was kind of unhappy at how PBS dropped off Super Tuesday coverage fairly early in the evening. Political sickos pretty much had to rely on CNN which was all tech-ed out: did you see that crazy stage Wolf Blitzer was on? How about the map with _way_ too much information? They didn't even know where to look on that thing and neither did I. Was I looking at specific precincts reporting, or was it statewide? Etc. The pack of political neanderthals they gathered for us was also uninspiring - can they not find some people _without_ political agendas to put on their programs? Who would ever want to hear anything from (the now morbidly obese) Bill Bennett? He's George Wendt without the humor. One thing's for sure, Super Tuesday is now too close too the Super Bowl and makes for an overwhelming 72 hour period, which is fine if you're a TV junkie.

If you see folks walking around with some dirt on their foreheads today, they proabably did it on purpose. It is Ash Wednesday, where Christians are supposed to fast, pray, repent after the debauchery of Mardi Gras and (Super Tuesday). So here' are a few debauch-free events for tonight:

It's pretty simple- he got the most states and the most delegates. That's it. Sure, Hillary had her voting demographic victories last night, with Hillary keeping Latino support and Hillary did get New York and California, but at the end of the day those things are only important as the delegates they get you. Clinton's Northeast Sweep didn't pan out as well as hoped, with Connecticut going to Barack. Speaking of Connecticut, Obama had a surprising number of white voters last night, which should put to rest any question about his ability to draw a plurality. The best thing the Clinton campaign could hope for out of this is that the media would take a look at her wins in those two states and declare her the front runner again- but so far, that doesn't seem to be happening.

Calling it the "double bubble" where Decline-To-State/Non-Partisan voters had to ink a Democratic bubble at the top of their card in order for their ballot to count, Los Angeles City Attorney Rocky Delgadillo called on the Los Angeles County Registrar and California Secretary of State to review and make sure the intent of everyone's vote counted.

• Don't forget: LAist Super Tuesday Election Party tonight at Seven Grand! Details and RSVP here.
• Did you have any problems voting in Los Angeles today? The Los Angeles Times and LAist report on problems in the precincts, especially for non-partisan voters.
• Is it still a long strange trip if it's only just begun? The last remaining members of the Grateful Dead are reuniting tonight in San Francisco to show their support for Obama.
• The HuffPost says that Obama AND Clinton will be the big winners on Super Tuesday...of course, that depends on what "win" means.
• Polls are closing one by one over the next few hours: so far Huckabee has won West Virginia and Obama has Georgia.
• If prisoners can vote, so can you! Even California's inmates have been swept up in election fever this year.
• Want to know about where LAist, your absolutely favoritest ever LA city blog, will be headed in the next year? Check out this interview with the your favorite cute n' cuddly Editor, Zach Behrens, over at the San Fernando Valley Business Journal (paid subscribers only, sorry, email Zach and harass him if this upsets you as much as it upsets me).
• Tired of election news? Why not take a break with this classic Disney cartoon from the 1950's: Willie the Operatic Whale. Why not, you know?

Crazy super Tuesday. So excited. I showed up at my polling place, Emerson Junior High School around 10am today. No crowds, I took the day off of work and took my time getting over there. I went inside to find 5 voting officials with a cumulative age of 496 yakking to each other and paying absolutely no attention to me, the ballots, or the voting booths. There was a middle aged woman there in a wooly hat, a face mask and dark sunglasses who was livid that her polling place had been changed. She kept insisting that she vote the junior high school, even though her name wasn't on the list and her sample ballot had a different address for a polling place. Numerous arguments such as "I live right up the street!" and "I've voted here for 12 years!" were not swaying the voting officials. In the midst of her screeching whining chaos, no one was paying any attention to little ol' me. Some woman who had clearly lost her hearing about 26 years ago handed me a ballot without checking that I'd signed in or registered. Great. I could be a terrorist.

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It's just another day at the beach for this polling place in Marina Del Rey, where volunteers hand out fresh-baked goodies to the voters and are hosting a BBQ for the poll workers.

In a quite quickly put-together press conference slated for 2:00 p.m. today at the First Street Steps at City Hall, Councilmen Eric Garcetti and Dennis Zine will be reminding voters that if you're nonpartisan or 'decline to state,' you must mark the box at the top of the ballot if you want to vote for an American Independent or Democratic candidate.

It’s Super Tuesday and Mardi Gras. What other reason do you need to celebrate with LAist? Come to Seven Grand tonight to watch election returns. (Who knew that primaries would be this exciting?) You never know…people may start flashing for beads after a few Glenlivets. For questions or to RSVP: events@laist.com (Note: Seven Grand is a 21+ bar. We apologize for any inconveniences).

Usually Tuesday nights are slow for music in this town. Not tonight -- the spirit of Super Tuesday and democracy must have rung clear to bookers. Of course, LAist is having a party too, starting at 7:00 p.m. at Seven Grand. Choices, choices.

We're getting reports of problems from readers, writers and the media. John Ennis, one of the founders of Video the Vote, gave LAist this update. Most of the confusion today is over people who are not registered as Democrat or Republican who want to vote in the primaries. The issue might be that they moved and they thought they were up to date. If you are a non-partisan voter, all you have to do is go to either a Democratic or Republican voting booth. Other than a few precincts not opening on time, Ennis says things seem to be running smooth, but it's early in the day he warned. To report a bad voting experience, call Video the Vote at 866-OUR-VOTE

The following is not an endorsement of LAist, it is the opinion of the writer.

At last week's meeting between Metro and the public about the Westside extension, Metro said that a subway (or subways) could be built and finished in five years.