LATIMES.COM S THURSDAY, MARCH 5, 2020A
■■■ ELECTION 2020 ■■■
more transparent and more
secure. They expressed no
serious reservations before
Tuesday’s election, which in-
cluded state and local races
and the presidential pri-
mary.
Supervisor Janice Hahn
introduced a motion at a
Board of Supervisors meet-
ing Wednesday ordering vot-
ing officials to report back
within 45 days on the exces-
sive wait times and staffing
and technical problems. The
motion also demands that
officials come up with ways
to solve the voting problems
before the Nov. 3 general
election.
The board is expected to
vote on Hahn’s motion next
week. At Wednesday’s meet-
ing, the supervisors ac-
knowledged the polling cen-
ter problems but also sug-
gested there were issues be-
cause many people voted on
the same day.
“Many, many things went
well; I wish more people had
voted before yesterday,” Su-
pervisor Sheila Kuehl said.
“It took me six minutes on
Sunday.”
“It was a new system, yes.
We spent a lot of money on
it,” Hahn said Wednesday.
“But I really want to get to
the bottom of some of the
problems that did happen
yesterday and see if they are
fixable, of course, before
November.”
It was unclear how much
voter turnout affected the
breakdowns. The county re-
ported Wednesday morning
that it had counted 1,137,
ballots, or 20.62% of the
county’s eligible registered
voters. Of the total, 485,
were vote-by-mail ballots,
and 651,392 were cast at vot-
ing centers. But an untold
number of ballots remained
to be tallied, and county vote
tabulations sometimes drag
on for a week or more.
New vote centers that
opened 10 days before elec-
tion day were part of a re-
vamped system that consol-
idated roughly 4,500 voting
locations into 978 vote cen-
ters in neighborhoods
stretching from Lancaster
to Long Beach. Logan, the
county registrar-recorder
and clerk, acknowledged
that the flow of voters over-
whelmed vote centers in
high-density areas such as
downtown Los Angeles.
“Those locations were
too small, and we didn’t have
enough people to support
them,” Logan told The
Times. “The volume began
to spin and there just wasn’t
a way to catch up.”
Late on election night,
Logan said the county also
may have overestimated
how many voters would use
a new early voting period.
“That resulted in a sig-
nificant amount of voters
turning out on election day,”
he said.
Complaints from voters
and poll workers centered
on two choke points in the
new system.
The first came when vot-
ers tried to check in. Poll
workers used electronic tab-
lets to look up voter regis-
tration information, but as
crowds swelled, the devices,
called ePollbooks, stalled in
attempts to sync with the
county’s voter database.
“They never mentioned
the syncing thing in train-
ing,” said Daniel Thwing, a
worker at one west San Fer-
nando Valley vote center.
“The bottleneck was thesign-up [tablets]. Key
presses wouldn’t do any-
thing and then suddenly
they would load everything
all at once.”
Emily Dibiny, a worker at
a center east of UCLA, said
that even voters who
brought in registration
paperwork, complete with
computer QR codes, did not
appear in the electronic vot-
er rolls.
“The scanner couldn’t
read their registered per-
sonal info,” said Dibiny, who
first lodged her complaints
on Twitter. “We had to regis-
ter people as new voters even
though they lived at the
same address for years, even
if they voted in 2018.”
When registration could
not be confirmed, voters
were told to cast provisional
ballots, uncounted until a
postelection check of the
voter’s eligibility.
Some voters and poll
workers said the problems
seemed exacerbated be-
cause poll workers lacked
technical savvy. Thwing, a
computer science major atPierce College, said he
quickly figured out how to
use the tablets to sign in vot-
ers. But he said some older
workers struggled during an
eight-hour training.
“It was going to be the
blind leading the blind,” said
Thwing, 22.
The second bottleneck
occurred when voters tried
to finish voting. Many did
not understand that they
had to get the touch-screen
computer to print out a bal-
lot, reinsert it into the mach-
ine after verifying selections
and then press a final button
to cast the ballot.
Thinking they had cast
their votes, many voters
walked away from the mach-
ines prematurely. By the
time election workers
chased them down, the
machines might have been
taken over by another voter.
That led to further delays for
voters who couldn’t submit
their printout and instead
had to cast provisional
ballots.
The county’s election
plan was unlike any other inCalifornia when it came to
worst-case scenarios. While
other counties deployed
backup ballot printers,
Los Angeles used only the
touch-screen machines for
printouts.
In January, Secretary of
State Alex Padilla insisted
on changes in L.A. County’s
election plan before the new
system would be cleared for
use. Among the changes —
which included hardware
changes to reduce paper
jams and better security
seals on ballot boxes — was a
last-resort method for vot-
ers to cast a ballot if the
machines failed.
L.A. County’s alternative
required voters to write in
the name of the candidate or
ballot measure choice in ev-
ery race.
At the Warner Avenue El-
ementary School vote center
in Westwood, voters became
so frustrated that they tore
open a box of the write-in
forms, Dibiny said.
“We ran out of the ballots
in English and people were
taking them in Spanish andChinese and Farsi, even if
they didn’t speak that lan-
guage,” said Dibiny, a voice-
over actress. “They weren’t
going to wait for four hours.
They just wanted to vote.”
Poll workers said they
were badly outnumbered.
Holly Gunderson described
her 18-hour shift at the Hol-
lywood Hotel as “gnarly” —
only four people staffed the
vote center, far fewer than
the 10 poll workers who had
been promised during her
training. In the West Valley,
Thwing said, a dozen work-
ers were expected at his lo-
cation, but only four showed
up.
The stress mounted
through the day.
Dibiny arrived before 6
a.m. and worked past 10 p.m.
Sympathetic voters brought
cookies and granola bars to
provide poll workers suste-
nance. But a pizza delivered
for the workers was gobbled
up by hungry voters.
Not all voters were sym-
pathetic.
“People were yelling at
me,” said Dibiny, 49. “I was
exhausted. I was crying.”
Los Angeles County is no
stranger to election snafus.
In 2000, thousands of voters
complained that they never
got absentee ballots they ap-
plied for. In 2008, about
100,000 nonpartisan voters
had their presidential pri-
mary ballots voided because
a confusing ballot design
caused many to neglect
marking an extra bubble.
In 2016, the county moved
to early voting, only to see
voters respond with such en-
thusiasm that some waited
up to four hours at half a doz-
en polling places set up the
weekend before election day.
And in 2018, 118,500 names
were omitted from the eligi-
ble-voter rosters when the
county’s election software
was unable to process a for-
matting change in state vot-
er data.
The county had a trial
run of the new electronic vot-
ing system in a local and mu-
nicipal election in Novem-
ber, which revealed paper
jams and other glitches. Lo-
gan and his staff reported to
the Board of Supervisors in
December that the printers
had been recalibrated: “The
pilot [program] assisted the
department in identifying
and resolving issues that
would not have been identi-
fied otherwise.”Major bottlenecks in voting system
VOTERS WAITin line at Manhattan Beach’s Marine Avenue Park on Tuesday. Several L.A. County vote
centers had hours-long waits on election day — the first major test of a new $300-million voting system.Christina HouseLos Angeles Times[Voting,from A1]
After spending a record-
shattering sum, former New
York Mayor Michael R.
Bloomberg ended his presi-
dential bid Wednesday after
a dismal showing in the Su-
per Tuesday primaries left
him no pathway to the
Democratic nomination or
the White House.
Bloomberg swiftly en-
dorsed Joe Biden, the for-
mer vice president who
pulled a stunning comeback
Tuesday and surged into the
lead in the nomination race.
The two spoke on the phone
early Wednesday.
“I am clear-eyed about
our overriding objective, and
that is victory in November.
Not victory for me, or our
campaign, but victory for
our country,” Bloomberg
told more than 1,000 staffers
at an afternoon meeting in
New York. “If you remember,
I entered the race for presi-
dent to defeat Donald
Trump, and today, I am leav-
ing the race for the same rea-
son, to defeat Donald
Trump, because staying in
would make it more difficult
to achieve that goal.”
Bloomberg, who grew
emotional as he thanked his
team for taking him from 1%
in the polls to 2 million votes,
said that after Tuesday’s re-
sults, he did not have a viable
path to the Democratic
nomination.
The billionaire spent a
whopping $676 million as of
Tuesday, or about 1% of his
net worth, but won only
American Samoa and five of
its six delegates. He won a
few dozen other delegates in
other contests.
Biden thanked his for-
mer rival. “This race is big-
ger than candidates and big-
ger than politics. It’s about
defeating Donald Trump,
and with your help, we’re
gonna do it,” Biden tweeted.
Bloomberg’s departure
clears the way for fellow
moderate Biden to go head-
to-head against Vermont
Sen. Bernie Sanders, a self-
declared democratic social-
ist, in the remaining prima-
ries, starting with Tuesday,
when six more states will
vote.
Bloomberg is expected to
continue pouring his fortune
into the campaign, and to
swing his extensive field or-
ganization behind Biden,
who has few field offices.
Many of Bloomberg’s
staffers have contracts
through the fall election.
The former mayor said
Democrats must unite to de-
feat Trump in November,
and that after Biden’s sweep
of nine states Tuesday he de-
served to be the nominee.
“Joe has fought for work-
ing people his whole life. To-
day I am glad to endorse him
— and I will work to make
him the next President of theUnited States,” he said.
Trump, who has mocked
Bloomberg relentlessly
since he entered the race,
added another dig.
“Mini Mike Bloomberg
just ‘quit’ the race for Presi-
dent. I could have told him
long ago that he didn’t have
what it takes, and he would
have saved himself a billion
dollars, the real cost,” the
president tweeted. “Now he
will pour money into Sleepy
Joe’s campaign, hoping to
save face. It won’t work!”
The latest shakeup in the
Democratic race follows
days of turmoil. After Biden
swept South Carolina’s pri-
mary Saturday, three com-
petitors — former Mayor
Pete Buttigieg of South
Bend, Ind., Minnesota Sen.
Amy Klobuchar and Califor-
nia billionaire and activist
Tom Steyer — dropped out.
Buttigieg and Klobuchar en-
dorsed Biden, helping him
consolidate support going
into Super Tuesday, and he
won the vast majority of late-
deciders at the polls.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren of
Massachusetts and Rep.Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii re-
main in the race, but neither
has won a primary. Warren
suffered the indignity Tues-
day of winning only third
place in her home state,
putting pressure on her to
drop out.
“Elizabeth is talking to
her team to assess the path
forward,” a Warren aide said
Wednesday morning.
Warren and other Demo-
crats had campaigned for
nearly a year in the early vot-
ing states of Iowa, New
Hampshire, Nevada and
South Carolina by the time
Bloomberg entered the race
in November.
Charting a new course,
Bloomberg skipped the four
early states and bet heavily
on Super Tuesday, when
California, Texas and 12
other states held their pri-
maries.
Bloomberg hired armies
of lavishly paid campaign
staffers across the country
and bombarded the air-
waves with ads. Through
Tuesday, Bloomberg spent
$552 million on television, ra-
dio and digital advertising,according to Advertising
Analytics, a firm that tracks
political ad spending.
The TV blitz allowed him
to forgo the retail politicking
expected in the early states,
which was never his
strength.
He touted his record as
former mayor, his business
acumen and success, as well
as the vast sums he had
spent to help fight for gun
control and climate change
action, two issues important
to the Democratic base.
Initially, he began to rise
in polls while Biden’s cam-
paign flailed, losing the first
three contests. But then vot-
ers, many who first were in-
troduced to him in slickly
produced television ads, saw
the unscripted Bloomberg
on his debut debate per-
formance in Las Vegas in
February. It was a disaster.
Bloomberg had not de-
bated in years and faced
candidates who had honed
their skills for months. Some
relished the chance to attack
Bloomberg, accusing him of
trying to hide his past and
buy the nomination.
Bloomberg argued that
since he was not taking do-
nations, he was beholden to
no one.
During the debate,
Bloomberg was hammered
about past boorish com-
ments about women,
nondisclosure agreements
his company signed with
women who had filed sexual
harassment claims, and his
stop-and-frisk policing pol-
icy as mayor that dispropor-
tionately affected minorities
and ultimately was ruled un-
constitutional. To many, he
appeared rusty and haugh-
ty.
Bloomberg has pledged
that if he didn’t win the
nomination, he would sup-
port the Democratic candi-
date by funding an inde-
pendent anti-Trump effort.
On a Wednesday morn-
ing call with top campaign
advisors in 43 states,
Bloomberg’s national states
director, Dan Kanninen,said the campaign appara-
tus needs to be restructured
for its new role, and that he
expected to have a plan by
the end of March.
Bloomberg’s spending
on his campaign was off the
charts. The prior modern-
day records were held by
Ross Perot, who ran as an in-
dependent in 1992, and Steve
Forbes, who ran as a Repub-
lican in 2000. Each spent
about $110 million in today’s
dollars. Steyer, a hedge-fund
manager turned environ-
mental activist, spent more
than a quarter-billion dol-
lars before he dropped out
last week.
But Bloomberg’s politi-
cal spending is unlikely to af-
fect his bottom line.
The businessman and
former three-term mayor of
New York is worth an esti-
mated $55 billion, making
him one of the richest men in
the world. He made his for-
tune by creating a business
that provides news, analyt-
ics and data to financial
companies at a premium
cost through terminals.
The 78-year-old had
flirted with presidential
runs for more than a decade.
He announced in March 2019
that he would not run. But
then Bloomberg grew un-
happy with the Democratic
field and Biden’s apparent
weakness. When he finally
jumped in last November, he
kicked off his campaign with
a $37-million weeklong ad
blitz.
Bloomberg was criticized
by his rivals over his person-
al riches — especially in light
of his opposition to a wealth
tax. He was accused of not
being a true Democrat, giv-
en his party registration
shifts over the years.
Bloomberg brushed
aside such criticism, saying
in November, “I am going to
make my case and let the
voters, who are plenty
smart, make their choice.”Times staff writer Michael
Finnegan contributed to
this report.Bloomberg exits the race and quickly endorses Biden
MICHAEL R. BLOOMBERGgreets supporters in New York. His departure
clears the way for Joe Biden to go head-to-head against Bernie Sanders.Eduardo Munoz AlvarezAssociated PressThe former New York
mayor, who spent
$676 million on his
campaign, says his
focus is to stop Trump.
By Seema Mehta