L.A. County: Voting inspector in jail? No. But deceased candidate is truly in the running.

This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.

It was an unsettling morning at the polls for L.A. resident John Dunne, who was told he could not vote because the voting inspector at the Westlake polling place had been arrested and taken to jail.

Dunne, 29, went to the MacArthur Park Community Center about 7:30 a.m. Tuesday to find a lone woman at a table with no voting booths or election equipment in sight. He asked the poll worker where he could vote, and she told him the inspector was arrested and in jail.

He could try coming back around 6 p.m., she suggested.

While Dunne was able to look up another polling place and cast a provisional ballot before heading to work, he said he was furious.

“It’s ridiculous,” he said in a phone interview. “They’re just completely disenfranchising a whole voting district.”

Eileen Shea, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County registrar-recorder, confirmed that the poll worker had been telling early voters that the inspector had been arrested. The worker had heard the inspector was in jail and spread the news to explain why voting had not begun. In reality, the inspector had called in sick and asked someone to go by her house to pick up the roster and ballots, Shea said.

‘Honestly, I’m dumbfounded,” Shea said after speaking with the worker by phone. Voting at the location began at 7:45 a.m., Shea said, and a coordinator was being sent to the polling place to speak with the worker.

Other than a polling place in Woodland Hills that opened late because of a hospitalized inspector, Shea had not heard of other election-day hiccups in L.A. County. By 10 a.m., three hours after the polls opened, nearly 7% of the more than 4 million registered voters in L.A. County had cast their ballots, she said.

In Long Beach and the South Bay, voters had the option of voting for a deceased candidate. Polling places in the 28th State Senate District posted signs saying Democratic State Sen. Jenny Oropeza, who died nearly two weeks ago at age 53, “remains an active candidate.”

When a candidate dies right before an election, he or she remains on the ballot, and votes for the deceased are counted, according to the L.A. County registrar-recorder’s office. If the deceased candidate wins, the governor must call a special election to fill the seat.

RELATED:

Election will test accuracy of polls

Meg Whitman: No regrets about record spending

Schwarzenegger won’t say if he voted for Whitman or Brown

-- Raja Abdulrahim and Tony Barboza