A former student of mine read my recent post on the potential issues facing “decline-to-state” voters in California’s primary next week. He pointed out another potential problem these voters might face:

I noticed your post about decline-to-state voters needing to request Democratic ballots, and thought you might be interested in some LA-specific issues. In LA county (and maybe others depeding on their equipment), all decline-to-state voters get the same Inkavote card ballot (the grid-o-bubbles), but they pick which party race they are voting in (Democratic vs. AI) by going into the party booth and marking the party at the top of the ballot. If the voter forgets to do this (as a fair number did in a recount I attended), then the ballot is invalid.

I attached the relevant page from the Democratic and AI sample ballot. The relevant bubbles are 5 and 6.

The sample ballots he sent along are here for the Democrats and for the American Independents.

Thanks for the tip, we’ll look out for this on election day and in the post-election canvass.