Opinion: The big one on the big day; California’s voters stream out

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Voters in California, the biggest prize on the biggest day of primary voting in the nation’s history, streamed to the polls in possibly record numbers.

With last-minute polls showing tightening races in both parties between Republicans Sen. John McCain and Mitt Romney and Sens. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, most of them made equally last-minute campaign appearances in the Golden State. A victory in California could catapult the winners to their party nominations. And California voters also had seven hot initiative issues to settle plus numerous local issues.

At least two Los Angeles polling places did not open on time this ...

morning and early-morning voters settled in for a long wait or walked away. Times reporters Tiffany Hsu, Paloma Esquivel and Molly Hennessy-Fiske were all over the story.

Matt Gray, 43, a registered Democrat, showed up at the Westside Jewish Community Center on Olympic Tuesday to find voting machines missing, long lines and poll workers stumped by his sample ballot, which was mistakenly labeled ‘independent.’ Up to 50 people left while he waited to vote with a provisional ballot.

‘It’s very frustrating: how do you not have the machines,’ said Gray. ‘They’re saying they’re not turning people away, but they are.’

Voters in nearly half the states went to the polls in what has become, in effect, a national primary day with much at stake for the major parties and their candidates.

California will be closely watched, but much of the nation may be in bed by its results time. Results in California are expected to be reported far later than usual this year because many counties are using paper ballots, which must be fed manually into scanners.

Secretary of State Debra Bowen decertified the vast majority of electronic voting machines in the state last year, arguing that they were vulnerable to tampering and have defects that could mar vote counts.

As a result, about a third of California counties were scrambling to prepare for the primary, printing millions of paper ballots, acquiring new optical scanners and pressing into service scanners normally used to count absentee ballots. The full California story is available here.

-- Andrew Malcolm