L.A. County’s Voter Center System Holds Up During Election

(TNS) — In what may now seem like eons ago, Los Angeles County's chief election official Dean Logan stood in front of cameras after a day of voting center meltdowns.

The March 3 primary election was the inaugural mass rollout of the county's $300 million vote center network — a highly touted system that was supposed to make voting across the county easier and faster.

But after a day of technical glitches, poll worker issues, communications problems, it only made voters angrier. Long lines and waits plagued the county's new vote centers. Ballot machines jammed. Voter check-in devices froze.

To put a cap on it, even presidential candidate Bernie Sanders called out Logan's office for the long lines, filing a court injunction to keep them open.

A nightmare, of sorts. "Growing pains," said a clearly pained Logan, who many called to be fired amid the debacle.

The day was exactly the opposite of what Logan wanted the system to do: In conjunction with early voting, the vote centers, hundreds of them scattered throughout the county were to draw people to vote early, or simply drop off their ballot — up to 11 days before the election, so that by the actual Election Day, the polls would not be flooded.

Flash forward. COVID. Summer. Election Day, Nov. 3, 2020. Massive turnout.

It was a very different story. Instead of getting an earful, he's got newfound confidence in the system — and a job.

"Overall, very pleased with the performance of our elections workers today," Logan told reporters Tuesday night, a far cry from March when he was getting an earful from irate members of the L.A. County Board of Supervisors. "We're pleased to see that not just the technology, but the 10-day early voting period combined with the vote by mail really is playing out the vision of our Votions Solutions for All People initiative, a project that we worked on for over a decade in L.A. County."

Logan said the keys to the system's October/November success was that elections officials and poll workers had worked out the digital logjams in the check-in process and that elections workers were able to keep voters moving through the process and that workers were more "in tune with the process."

It didn't hurt that there were more than 16,000 of those workers at the county's more than 750 vote centers this cycle.

Not only that, but they had immediate technical support for anything that could go wrong. When they did, it was clear, even from the early voting at the end of October, that they seemed to be jumping on the problem and resolving it quickly.

In March, the same kinds of problems forced some centers — like the Hollywood Bowl site — to close, turning away baffled voters, who had a few choice words.

But the words were much kinder over the last several days.

"It was very positive," said Charles Porter of LaVerne. "I had some problems because I'm a recent re-locator from Washington to California, but other than that it was pretty seamless."

And that site at the Hollywood Bowl that was closed in March?

"It was super easy," said Amira Nader at the Hollywood Bowl. "I selected all of my choices. Reviewed the printed ballot. Cast it at the end. It was a great feeling. The whole line took like 10 minutes."

It was all music to the ears of the Board of Supervisors, who have been all over Logan for months, requiring regular updates on election preparations — this in the wake of an internal and independent audits of the system after the March 3 election.

Supervisor Janice Hahn was among those most critical at the time.

Hahn lauded the operation of the system and Logan's efforts to manage the fixes, noting that even during a closed-session meeting Wednesday the board offered him "congratulations all around."

"The trust of the people was restored in the voting process in L.A. County," she said, noting that she toured some of the centers on Election Day, finding that IT support seemed to be integral in helping with any issues.

She was mindful of what could have happened though.

"If we would have had widespread problems yesterday, we would have looked seriously at his job positions," she said Wednesday. "I think the voters would have demanded that of us."

As it stands, the counting continued on Wednesday evening: 3,382,543 votes returned. The counting continues.

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