It turns out that over 118,000 people were left off voter rosters on election day for the June 5 primary. This had state and county leaders demanding answers from the Los Angeles County elections chief regarding the mistake. The county Board of Supervisors called for an investigation and California Secretary of State Alex Padilla asked the county registrar to provide him with a detailed report of what happened. At a county Board of Supervisors meeting, Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk Dean C. Logan said at the board meeting stated,
We fell short in meeting the more than reasonable expectations of the voters and poll workers. It’s an issue that I take seriously, I understand the gravity of it, especially in an environment where there is so much discussion about the security and integrity of our voting process. It was a data issue and it is a system issue that absolutely needs to be resolved.
According to county figures the roster mistake affected about 2.3 percent of the registered voters across the county and 35 percent of voting locations. Election officials blamed the faulty rosters on a printing error. According to Logan, the error involved the names printed on the rosters for polling places and had nothing to do with voter eligibility. Logan assured the Board of Supervisors that poll workers handed out provisional ballots to those who weren’t listed on the rosters. Hopefully, the Los Angeles County registrar’s office is able to fix the issue and this problem does not happen in future elections.
