Many voters in Los Angeles County had to stand in line for hours to vote on Super Tuesday. There were reports of glitchy equipment and confused staff, even though L.A. County was using new touch screen machines that were supposed to make voting faster and more convenient.

Guest: Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation (audio)

Excerpt:

Combined with more than half a million votes that the registrar has received through the mail, that would already represent a 13% turnout for L.A. County, if all the votes cast so far are counted.

The new system has its advantages, says Kim Alexander of the California Voter Foundation, a voter outreach and research nonprofit. She said there have been bumps as the new system has been rolled out, but called the vote centers “a good fail safe for a place like Los Angeles where we have millions of voters.”

There are nearly a thousand voting centers to choose from, but many longtime polling places won’t be open this year.

I caught up with Alexander while she was driving between vote centers in Watts and Culver City to see how the new system was working.

She said she saw lines growing this morning, which could signal long waits tomorrow.

Kim Alexander is president of the California Voter Foundation (CVF), a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization she re-founded in 1994 and dedicated to improving the voting process to better serve voters, online at www.calvoter.org. CVF is a longtime leader in advancing the responsible use of technology in the democratic process, by pioneering online voter education, online campaign finance disclosure, and voter-verified paper ballot records and auditing requirements for computerized voting systems.

Excerpt:

Skeptics might call them do-gooders. But in today’s world—when we could surely use as much good as possible—what’s wrong with that?

To highlight the 30th anniversary of SN&R, we want to recognize 30 people who embody our mission: To have a positive impact on our communities and make them better places to live.

On purpose, the vast majority on this list are not high-profile politicians, the rich and powerful or other bold names. Many come from the nonprofit world, not well-known to the general public but working every day to help the less fortunate and to make public policy smarter and more humane. Some have been in the trenches for many years, while others are just emerging as leaders.

Like any list like this, it’s rather subjective. There are many others in the Sacramento region who are doing yeoman’s work and also deserving of praise.

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Kim Alexander

President of the nonpartisan California Voter Foundation, she’s a strong advocate for more informed voters having a bigger say, and for voters across the state having equal access to participate. Her group is particularly focused on making sure that technology helps—not harms—our democracy.

(full story)