The City Clerk's office tells LBREPORT.com it's not their doing, and in an email City Clerk Larry Herrera says the explanation lies in the system used by the U.S. Postal Service. The issue arises as the City Clerk's office itself unveils 21st century, cutting edge digital tools facilitating voter access to information.

In an email to freelance photojournalist Diana Lejins (who spotted the issue and is very disturbed by the delay in some voters receipt of their printed sample ballots/voter pamphlets), City Clerk Herrera sent an email (below) describing the Postal Service's procedures, urging patience with USPS...and stating that he will personally mail the sample ballot/voter pamphlet to anyone who didn't receive one...and adding that LB voters now also have online tools available to view the sample ballot/election pamphlet candidate statements immediately 24/7.

[In a separate snafu, the City Clerk's office acknowledges that the names of the ballot proposition argument writers were erroneously omitted in the printed election pamphlet, but notes that the argument texts pro/con do appear in full in the print versions and the argument writers' names have been added to online versions.]

Regarding the arrival/non-arrival of the hard copy printed sample ballots/election pamphlets, Assistant City Clerk/Elections Bureau Manager Poonam Davis explained to LBREPORT.com that sample ballots/election pamphlets are printed by a hired vendor in Washington state, then trucked to Los Angeles in a privately dedicated vehicle and delivered to a USPS mail center in L.A. [the Redondo Ave. LB facility is no operating]...and this has been completed. From L.A., the materials are distributed to letter carriers for delivery on their Long Beach routes.

So...what accounts for some LB voters receiving/not receiving their sample ballots/election pamphlets on a relatively equal basis, and some voters receiving their vote-by-mail ballots before getting their sample ballots/election pamphlets?

[City Clerk Herrera Mar. 13 email text to Ms. Lejins, cc'd to media outlets] All April 8 sample ballots booklets have been provided to the Long Beach Post Offices for the letter carriers to deliver. We confirmed this status with our liaisons at the USPS.

When the booklets arrive in Long Beach, our letter carriers take as many sample ballot booklets as they can each day. This would explain situation wherein some registered voters in a household may receive their sample ballot booklet while others in the same household do not. So let me suggest this, If any of the voters you spoke to do not receive their sample ballot booklet in the next couple of days, they should call me and I will mail them one.

While the booklets are distributed by carrier route, the vote by mail ballots are delivered via first class mail. This explains the situation you describe. If for some reason, a voter does not get their vote by mail ballot, have them call me.

With regard to Measure A, a mistake was made and we have done our best to point this out to voters via a press release. While I too am concerned about this mistake, we have corrected the online sample ballot booklet to show that Jina Nam and Larry King as the authors of the arguments for and against Measure A, respectively.

City Clerk Herrera applauded Ms. Lejins for her vigilance but urged giving USPS a chance, noting that moving 370,000+ pieces of mail to a very mobile population is no small task.

Meanwhile, LBREPORT.com has separately learned that at least one USPS LB delivery person simply left a load of sample ballots/election pamphlets in the lobby of a downtown residential building (roughly 150+ units) on or about Mar. 8 instead of putting them in individual mail boxes. (It's also visibly alongside some commercial and political mail.) Here's a photo provided by an LBREPORT.com reader.

If you are among those who haven't received a sample ballot/election pamphlet text by Saturday, Mar. 15, LBREPORT.com is interested in hearing from you. We're trying to figure out if this is a relatively small or larger issue. We can't fix it, but we can report it. Let us know at mail@LBReport.com or via Facebook to www.Facebook.com/lbreport.

LBREPORT.com hasn't had the opportunity over the weekend to contact the LB area Postmaster or other USPS officials for their views on this.

[Editor's opinion: LBREPORT.com has long urged Congress to end USPS' monopoly on 1st class mail and forbid the continued subsidy of commercial "junk mail" by 1st class mail rates.]

While the Postal Service is using last century's delivery systems, the LB City Clerk's office is using 21st century digital methods, debuting a 2014 Election App available for free download in the App Store and Google Play.