Last Tuesday, we California voters were feeling pretty good about ourselves and the small-D democratic process.

With the state primary fast forwarded to Super Tuesday, we finally got our shot at picking in real time the presidential candidates for the November election.

But for some 94,000 voters in Los Angeles County that bubble burst.

Florida's Palm Beach County had an outbreak of hanging chads in the 2000 presidential election. Los Angeles County erupted into double-bubble trouble last week.

In this country, we believe in one person, one vote.

But for L.A. County voters who fall into the category of "Decline to State," this ballot was designed as two bubbles, one vote.

These nonpartisans were eligible to cast ballots for candidates of either the Democratic or American Independent parties. The GOP restricted its primary to registered Republicans.

In Los Angeles County, the decision was made to create one ballot for decline-to-state voters. It listed the American Independent and the Democratic hopefuls.

The trouble was, decline-to-state voters had to select not only their candidate but also something called the party box, which sounds like what was going on when this ballot was designed.

About half of these voters failed to mark in both places, and it's possible their ballots will be disqualified.

This double bubble apparently was a way to comply with a state law that requires each county's election division to provide an exact accounting of how many voters crossed over.

Los Angeles County likes to tout its InkaVote Plus system, which sounds like something you'd buy on late-night TV for three easy payments that invariably end in 99.

This optical scanner detects overvoting, according to a video on the L.A. County registrar's Web site. Why not just program it to detect undervoting?

And you have to ask why didn't the problem bubble up in Ventura County?

The answer: Because the officials kept it simple. So simple, in fact, it never occurred to me as I watched my spouse vote that there could be any problem at all.

My husband registers as decline to state, despite the fact he can be quite forthcoming about his positions at the dinner table.

When he voted at Wildwood School in Thousand Oaks, the poll worker simply asked him which ballot he wanted. He was handed that party's ballot.

He filled in the one arrow, fed it into the machine and stuck on his "I voted" sticker.

To fulfill that reporting requirement for cross-over voters, poll workers in Ventura County simply marked on the voter roster which ballot the decline-to-staters took, according to Tracy Saucedo, assistant registrar of voters in Ventura County. Elections staff must go over the roster for voter histories anyway so this creates only a small extra step, she pointed out.

Apparently, she read Democracy for Dummies.

The process of voting should be idiot-proof. No bells. No whistles. No butterfly or bubble ballots. Essentially, Forrest Gump should design them.

I hate to burst anyone's bubble. But I don't see how we can, in good conscience, send observers to every shaky democracy on the planet when we can't get the basics down ourselves.

Résumé inflation

Two careful readers of my Feb. 3 column took exception to my claim John Kennedy and Barack Obama had comparable legislative experience when they made their bids for the White House.

In fact, John Kennedy served six years in the U.S. House of Representatives and eight in the U.S. Senate. Obama logged eight years in the Illinois Legislature and has spent three in the U.S. Senate.

In my defense, I am a native daughter of Illinois, and as such may be biased about the experience to be had in the Illinois Legislature. Dare I say it? He's no Jack Kennedy.

— E-mail this Star columnist at ccason@VenturaCountyStar.com.