Did your vote count? Mine didn't.

I'm really peeved about LA's ballot SNAFU. I think my ballot was among those that weren't counted because my attention was not drawn to the extra bubble I was supposed to fill in (and I don't remember seeing that instruction on the ballot at all). If you haven't heard, LA's in deep doo doo because their independent ballots had an extra bubble that up to 98,000 people didn't know they were supposed to check. Want to guess who most of those independents probably voted for? Well I can tell you who I tried to vote for: Obama. And it didn't count. Or it won't, unless they decide to take the thing to court, and then they can determine "voter intent."

You see, if you didn't fill in the bubble that said you were voting Democrat, then you might have meant to vote American Independent (can you say confusing terminology) and the AI party had 3 candidates, the Dems 8, so if you filled in one of the top three bubbles - I'm pretty sure Obama was one - then they can't tell if you meant to vote for the Dem candidate or the AI one. Except that common sense would dictate that probably 97,999 of the people meant to vote for the Democrat. Who's even heard of the American Independent party? I don't see why they can't just assume we meant the Democrat.

My main annoyance is that I asked for a Democrat ballot and I took what they gave me assuming it was the Democrat ballot, when in fact it was this weirdo nonpartisan ballot that required telling them you wanted it to be Democrat. And then there's the terminology - I'm registered as "decline to state," apparently the bubble said "nonpartisan voters check this bubble," and one of the parties is "American Independent." How I was supposed to figure out that applied to me, without the poll worker alerting me to look for it, is beyond me. I got my ballot, filled in all the bubbles as per the little arrows, and it doesn't count. Boo!