Voting hiccups in Los Angeles

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Photo by Jason Groman

When I finally reached the front of the line at my polling place this morning, the woman behind the table looked up at me and frowned. “It looks like you already voted,” she said. “By Mail. I can’t let you vote twice.”

The problem: I didn’t.

“Well,” the woman said when I told her, “I don’t know what to do. It says here that we received your ballot by mail.”

It took a little while, but eventually the polling place volunteers gave me a provisional ballot and I marked my ballot. I was a little shaken, but it turns out I’m not the only one who encountered this problem today.  Other, more serious snags cropped up too, the LA Times reported today. One polling place in South L.A. opened this morning with ballots but no voting machines. Some voters waited more than an hour for machines to arrive before giving up and leaving without casting a vote.

Still, the California Secretary of State’s office reported no major widespread problems today.