Incorrect Poll Information Under Fire

More than 40,000 Los Angeles city voters were mailed incorrect polling place information for next week’s election by the city clerk’s office--a wholesale error deemed unacceptable Thursday by Mayor Richard Riordan’s office and other proponents of reforming the city’s civic constitution.

The city clerk’s office confirmed that voters in at least 62 precincts, primarily in the San Fernando Valley and Westside, were mailed sample ballots that failed to list their correct polling places.

But other than two precincts in Chatsworth, where voters were mistakenly instructed to drive to Montebello to cast ballots, all the errors were due to last-minute cancellations of polling places, said Joe Giles, assistant chief of the city clerk’s elections division.

The city clerk is in charge of sending ballot information to roughly 1.9 million registered voters in more than 2,000 precincts.

In 40 precincts, elections officials purposely sent sample ballots listing the downtown Los Angeles address of the clerk’s office to voters as a polling place. They did so because officials had yet to line up new locations by mailing time after the originally scheduled spots had canceled.

In 19 others, voters were mailed sample ballots listing voting spots in their neighborhoods that later turned out to be incorrect because the polling places canceled after the ballots were mailed, Giles said.

Voters in 61 affected precincts were later mailed postcards informing them of their correct polling places, at an estimated cost of about $10,000. And in at least one other affected precinct in South Los Angeles, elections officials plan to post signs informing voters of the correct polling place after learning, too late to send a post card, of an error.

“This is a normal occurrence,” Giles said. “People often cancel their polling places because they have to go out of town or had a bad experience during the primary.”

That such mistakes occur every election is simply intolerable, said supporters of the charter reform measure on next week’s ballot.

They seized on the gaffe Thursday as an example of the kind of repeated government blunders that they say would not take place if the upgraded charter is approved and city bureaucrats held more responsible for their actions.

“When 43,000 people do not get the right information about where to vote, you begin to wonder where the accountability is,” Deputy Mayor Noelia Rodriguez said. “Who ultimately pays the price for that? The taxpayer.”

Richard Close, a leader of the Valley secession movement who also supports charter reform, was more caustic.

“Some people call this the City of Angels, but a better name might be city of errors,” he said. “It’s even worse that they admit this happens all the time.”

He said the size of the task before city officials was no excuse.

“I get my credit card bill every month, and those are sent out to millions of people,” Close said. “Government has to be responsible for what it does. Mistakes cannot be tolerated.”