Unexpected Civics Lesson for Kids at Polling Place

Pam and Evan Kaizer just wanted their children to get an education in democracy. Lesson One: Democracy is sometimes messy, often complicated, and should not always be left in the hands of adults.

For years, the Kaizers have allowed Los Angeles County to use their Studio City garage as a polling place, in part so their children could see how elections are run. On Tuesday, during an election so troubled that County Registrar-Recorder Conny McCormack calls it a “perfect storm,” Max and Lily Kaizer found out firsthand.

The Kaizer children, 16 and 12, were pressed into duty when poll workers failed to show up at the precinct, a breakdown that was repeated in polling places throughout the county. By all accounts, including McCormack’s, the two young people saved the day at Precinct 9001164A.

“They did great,” said poll captain Geoff McCalla, who asked the Kaizers for help when he realized his workers were no-shows. While there was nothing but praise for the children’s performance, the fact that they were needed illustrates just how badly the system failed in the Tuesday primary.

And technically, putting children to work violated state election law.

As it turned out, the place where they were working was especially sensitive: The Kaizers’ garage is in Los Angeles’ 2nd Council District, where Wendy Greuel held a 55-vote lead over Assemblyman Tony Cardenas (D-Panorama City) Thursday with absentee ballots still being counted.

Cardenas and Greuel representatives said they would need more details to know whether their campaigns would raise questions about the children’s involvement.

“Potentially, any time there are illegalities you have some concern,” said Cardenas’ attorney, Fred Woocher. The Kaizers were Greuel supporters, although they said they took down lawn signs before the election.

McCormack acknowledged that the children were not qualified to work in a polling place, but said it wasn’t clear to her that they were truly working.

“We certainly aren’t going to pay them as poll workers,” she said.

State law says that only poll workers and voters are allowed “to sit at the desk or table used by the precinct board”--by all accounts, the Kaizer children did that--and that poll workers must be registered voters, with an exception made for some high school seniors. Max Kaizer is a junior.

The county Board of Supervisors has asked McCormack to prepare a report explaining what went wrong in Tuesday’s election. McCormack said she has just begun investigating, but it is already clear that a confluence of unwelcome events made this one of the worst-run elections in the county in recent memory.

Among the factors: statewide redistricting, which changed district lines last fall; and a March primary, three months earlier than usual, compressing the time that county election workers had to prepare for the contest.

On top of that, changes in the primary voting system apparently caused many poll workers to drop out at the last minute, McCormack said.

“It just sounded too confusing, too complicated,” she said.

In the case of the Kaizers’ precinct, McCalla said the county failed to notify him of the names of the people who would be helping him.

One woman who usually works at the polling place showed up even though she wasn’t notified and wasn’t on the county’s list, he said, but nobody else arrived.

“Normally, I expect myself plus three” other workers, said McCalla, 28, who has worked as an election “inspector”--the head of a polling place--since he was 18.

“Tuesday morning, I show up, set everything up.... My one co-worker showed up on time--and no one else showed. So I went inside and I called the registrar and I said, ‘Hey, I’ve got myself and one other person; I need a board. And if you won’t supply me with someone

McCalla said he did not allow Max and Lily to handle ballots but set them to work signing voters in. Several voters in the neighborhood said they enjoyed seeing the young people working.

Michelene Laski said she arrived at the polling place to find 12-year-old Lily behind the table. “The job this kid was doing was fine,” Laski said. “She seemed very mature, and I think she felt important.”

Max Kaizer said he appreciated the opportunity to take part in the election.

“It was very interesting to see the whole process,” he said.

Lily had the day off from school because of parent-teacher conferences, and her brother helped out after he got home from school.

Both the Greuel and Cardenas campaigns are keeping a sharp eye on the final counting. Each had more than a dozen representatives at the registrar-recorder’s office Thursday to monitor county workers verifying the authenticity of signatures on absentee ballots that have not yet been counted.

The large delegations included some high-profile experts on voting issues, including Stephen Kaufman, an attorney for Greuel, and Fred Woocher, an attorney for Cardenas.

Kaufman accused Cardenas supporters of trying unsuccessfully to get election workers to set aside some absentee ballots on grounds the ballots were not properly punched, a charge that Josh Pulliam, a Cardenas aide, denied.

Pulliam, in turn, charged that a Greuel supporter was trying to get ballots with Spanish names set aside, but Kaufman denied that, calling it “baloney.”