The Altadena Town Council certified last month’s election tonight, amid protests that there were multiple irregularities in the election process.
While complimenting and congratulating his election opponent, Alice Wessen, outgoing councilman Walter Olszewski read a letter urging investigation of 11 alleged irregularities during the election, including: candidates actively campaigning within 100 ft. of a polling place; people “wearing uniforms of a certain (unidentified) organization” actively campaigning while staffing polls; polls not requiring identification; polls closing early; inaccurate maps that resulted in a number of people voting outside of their census tract; and councilmembers Eugene Sund and Ken Balder determining polling locations and staffing in their tracts, which they were not to do.
Polling irregularities were also cited during public comments, after the vote was certified. William Bowen, a neighbor of Olszewski’s and in his census tract, said that he was originally assigned to the wrong census tract due to an inaccurate map. After phone calls to other polling places, that was corrrected, but he wondered how many people cast votes in the wrong tract before it was corrected.
Likewise, Regina Grimes, another losing candidate, said that she had found suspicious signatures on the sign-in sheets, suspicious addresses, evidence of children voting, as well as the Farnsworth Park polling place running out of ballots.
There were also multiple wrestlings with Robert’s Rules of Order during the council’s election discussion, and disagreements as to whether Steve Haussler, a member of the ethics committee appointed by chairman George Lewis, could present a report of the committee’s investigation into election irregularities. Some members of the council thought that the ethics committee itself was irregular (“illegal,” said Balder), and by majority vote decided not to hear Haussler’s report.
Eventually, the majority of the council did vote to certify the election, but in the “new business” section decided that an investigation was in order by the new board, but the method seemed to be left up in the air. The new board was seated (Lewis lost the election, but will maintain his chairmanship until the start of the next meeting), and a committee formed to select officers for the new council.
Update 7/16 8 PM: PSN is running a story on the council meeting, and it looks like they have a copy of Haussler’s report.
Sad said…
sorry to say I now cannot trust ONE word out of the Town Council.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 at 07:43 AM
michele Zack said…
It was truly a shame that Steve Haussler was not allowed to present the findings of the Ethics Committee’s extremely thorough and fair-minded investigation. And it put those of us familiar with its contents in the uncomfortable situation of voting based on what we know, even though our votes could give the appearance of not making sense amid the frenzied storm of charges of polling irregularities. Yes, there were some irregularities and misbehavior. Despite these, a careful, signature by signature analysis by eight people of great integrity found that in the broad scheme of things none of these rose to the level of fraud or the possibility of changing the result in any single race. Thus I voted to have the report heard (lost that one) and also to certify the election.
I believe Chairman Lewis and the Executive Committee did the right thing in appointed non-involved people to look at the election. Since three on the exec were in races (Lewis, Mabel Duncan, and Bobby Thompson), and the other (that would be me, corresponding secretary Zack) was out of town three of the last four weeks, in fact it seemed the ONLY fair solution. Even with all that loud talk of the committee being ILLEGAL, I was surprised and disappointed that the Council voted down this common sense opportunity to let the public hear from 8 calm people who had actually examined the charges against the facts. I hope the Committee will post its report somewhere. Had it been read, we could have avoided much of last night’s circus, and reason might have prevailed…sigh…
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 at 08:32 AM
Robby said…
Hi all. First-time election worker here. Was the election process this year substantially different than it has been other years? For example, has identification been required in previous elections? Have voting stations ever opened late or closed early before? Has there ever been an incorrect map before? Have candidates visited multiple polling stations before?
I’d bet at least some of the irregularities under discussion this year have happened in the past. (Polls opening after 8am on Saturday morning, perhaps? Yaaaawn. =) ) Has there ever been talk of re-doing an election because of irregularities, or is this the first time that’s ever been proposed?
I really had fun working the election, but it was smoking hot that Saturday, and I was pretty peeved at the thought that the work everyone did that day might be thrown out, particularly if some of the problems with polling on that day have always been overlooked in past elections. If there are strict rules for how polling must proceed, it might be a good idea to write them out, maybe have some training for poll workers, make sure candidates understand and agree to the terms, etc. And perhaps establish some contingency so that it never comes to tossing an entire day of voting – I can’t imagine that turnout would be very high for a second election.
Thanks to the people doing the signature verifications, by the way. That’s probably a tough job. And thanks to Laura Chick for organizing.
(Altadenablog note: We think Robby means Laura Graham, the Altadena election chair, not Laura Chick!)
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 at 10:35 AM
Steve Haussler said…
I will ask the chair of the “ethics” committee, Joe Brown, if I can pass along our report to this blog. You may wish to post it, but if so, please do so in its entirety.
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 at 05:50 PM
Altadenablog said…
That would be great. We’d love to have a copy — however, according to this story that just went up, it looks like the Star-News has a copy already:
http://www.pasadenastarnews.com/news/ci_9901451
Wednesday, July 16, 2008 at 08:06 PM
Robby said…
Yikes, thank you for catching my error about Laura Graham. I apologize! I work downtown so I hear Laura Chick’s name all the time.
Thursday, July 17, 2008 at 09:15 AM