BUREAUCRACY WATCH : Ballot Blunder

It is already difficult to get folks interested in Los Angeles municipal elections. In April of 1989, for example, a whopping 24% of those registered actually turned out to vote. Now, the Tarzana 242 are getting a severe test of their civic pride. That’s the number of folks expected to negotiate a mountain range and 32 miles of their favorite freeways, round trip, to cast a ballot . . . in West Los Angeles.

It seems that an election worker created consolidated precinct No. 3137 by merging county precinct 900 7384--over the hill in West L.A.--with county precinct 900 7674, in Tarzana. The snafu was not discovered until a would-be voter saw it when a sample ballot arrived in the mail.

In response to the blunder, the city clerk’s office mailed an apology on April 5 to those affected, along with applications for absentee ballots. That was the alternative the city offered to the cross-mountain journey. But the city’s deadline for receiving the applications in the mail was Tuesday of this week--leaving many Tarzana folks in the lurch.

The Tarzanans can turn in their absentee ballot applications in person after the deadline, but that involves an even longer and potentially more aggravating drive, to downtown Los Angeles.

We have a different solution: The election worker who created this mess ought to drive to Tarzana and collect the absentee ballot applications that missed the deadline and take them back downtown, then return to Tarzana with the actual ballots that residents can use to vote by mail.