One Good Punch, and Florida Just a Memory

The heightened chad consciousness hovering over last week’s Los Angeles election seems to have had the desired effect: The half-million ballots cast by voters came in extraordinarily clean, with only 1,300 deemed “questionable.”

After enduring the spectacle of last year’s presidential vote in Florida--how could we forget the weeks of frazzled vote counters squinting skyward as they held each pockmarked ballot to the light?--Angelenos took care to meticulously poke their way through their punch-card ballots.

Election workers themselves were so cautious that they set aside ballot cards that looked the least bit bent, torn or “otherwise battered,” said Kristin Heffron, city elections supervisor. Most of the uncounted ballots merely need to be fed through tabulating machines, she said.

“I think that this election was exceptionally clean,” Heffron said. “We were very pleased that voters got the message.”

The small pile of unread ballots is not likely to tip the balance in the tight 3rd Council District race, where candidates await a final tally, Heffron said. Council aide Francine Oschin was 164 votes short of snagging a spot in that runoff, but she’s hoping to pull off a victory once officials finish counting about 24,000 remaining absentee and provisional ballots, possibly later this week.

“I’m absolutely not going to concede,” Oschin said Wednesday. “I’m going to wait until the city clerk makes a final determination.”

Police union director Dennis Zine was the top vote-getter and former council deputy Judith Hirshberg placed second, followed by Oschin. The error rate in last week’s election--less than half of 1% of the ballots cast citywide were set aside--is a marked improvement over the November results. The counting machines used in Los Angeles County during the presidential election failed to tally 2.36% of the vote, according to a federal lawsuit filed by the American Civil Liberties Union over vote-counting disparities.

But Oschin maintained that the city could do better. “I’ve lost by less than half a percent, so it certainly has an impact, doesn’t it?” she said. “It’s certainly better than Florida, but maybe it’s not enough.”

All the vigorous ballot-punching had an unintended effect: Dozens of voters were so determined to banish hanging chads that they snapped the metal tip off their stylus. Whoops.

Now, in addition to the “Got Chad?” reminders taped to the ballot boxes last week, Heffron has a new message: “I would caution the voters that once [the stylus] is through, they need to stop pushing.”

FIXING IT: City Councilmen Alex Padilla of Pacoima and Nick Pacheco of Boyle Heights are irritated that in a city where Spanish is the first language for many, hundreds of city street signs in Los Angeles do not use the language correctly.

In particular, the politicians are irked by 240 city signs that are missing an important Spanish punctuation mark--the tilde, which is needed to write an n, the 17th letter in the Spanish alphabet.

Pacheco cited street signs that read “Dona Alicia,”, which is in North Hollywood, and “Dona Cristina” that he said should read “Dona Alicia” and “Dona Cristina.” The word “Dona” is a title of respect for women, he said. Without the the tilde, a reader might think “Dona” is a name instead of a title.

In other cases, the missing tilde can change the meaning of a word from something positive to something negative.

The issue is timely, Pacheco said, noting the latest census figuring showing a growing Latino population.

“The city of Los Angeles should be sensitive to this growing culture’s concerns of pride in language differentiation,” Pacheco said. “Sensitivity to the concerns involves knowledge of phonetic pronunciations and accents.”

Correcting the punctuation is not going to be cheap.

A council motion written by Pacheco and seconded by Padilla proposes spending $31,600 to install the n on signs that need it.

MISFIRE? Future candidates for city office may hope they are targeted for defeat by the National Rifle Assn., judging from the group’s record of opposing candidates in last week’s election.

All NRA-targeted candidates were leading vote-getters in their respective races.

Among those targeted for defeat in NRA mailers were mayoral candidates Antonio Villaraigosa and James Hahn, the two who made it into a runoff; city attorney candidate Mike Feuer, who advanced to the runoff in that race; victorious city controller candidate Laura Chick, and council candidates Tom Hayden, Michael Woo and Janice Hahn, each of whom moved on to the runoffs. The group also targeted council members Alex Padilla and Cindy Miscikowski, both of whom were reelected.

The NRA campaign appears to have backfired, according to Luis Tolley, western regional director of Handgun Control Inc.

“For Los Angeles voters, it’s a badge of honor to be attacked by the NRA,” Tolley said. “Earning a spot on an NRA hit piece is better than getting the Good Housekeeping seal of approval.”