By Walter Moore, FORMER Candidate for Mayor of Los Angeles, WalterMooreForMayor.com

Aloha.

So Mrs. Moore and I woke up at our beautiful and luxurious resort here in Hawaii today, and what do you suppose was scampering across the grounds, wandering between the waterfalls and many swimming pools? Chickens! You know, like the one in my commercials. Is it an omen? Is it a humorous reminder? I did order eggs for breakfast, but not chickens.

But that's not the point.

The point is, the incredibly lazy and corrupt local media who ignored the preferred mayoral candidate of at least 60,000 voters -- yours truly -- need to try to redeem themselves, right now, by getting off their butts, getting out of their offices, and sending reporters and camera crews to two locations: i) the City Clerk's office, which has yet to finish counting all the ballots cast Tuesday; and ii) the offices of attorneys, including the U.S. Attorney, to ask them about voters' rights and improprieties in elections. Here's why:

The Fat Lady Has Yet To Sing

First of all, this election is not, strictly speaking, over. It turns out there are something like 43,000 uncounted ballots. If about 29,000 of those people voted for me or anyone other than Villaraigosa, we could still have a run-off. I'm not saying it's likely, but it's certainly mathematically possible. And if those ballots are disproportionately from the geographic areas where I had a majority, well, it could happen. Just so we're clear: I'm NOT saying it's likely; I'm just saying it is a possibility, and, therefore, ensuring the accurate counting of the remaining ballots could force a run-off. (Maybe we shouldn't have thrown away those yard signs after all.....)

The Changeling II: It's Not Who Votes That Counts, It's Who Counts The Votes

L.A.'s reporters should be asking in detail where these 43,000 or so ballots came from, and what safeguards, if any, are in place to ensure they don't grow legs and wander into a shredder.

Nor is this simply a hypothetical possibility. The lazy local reporters never even bothered to ask how the Jamiel's Law petitions were handled; never bothered to ask if they were kept under lock and key with a sign-out sheet or instead simply put on shelves next to cleaning supplies, where anyone with an agenda could deprive thousands of people of their voting rights in the time it takes to throw a stack of paper into a dumpster.

When Althea Shaw says she and her family gathered 76,000 signatures, I believe her. She could have been off by one or two thousand, but there is no way she mistook 18,000 signatures for 76,000 signatures. And when she was told she could pick up her petitions from a warehouse or store-room on another floor, that does not bode well for chain-of-custody, does it? I believe someone along the line pulled a "Changeling" on the Shaws and on the rest of us who gathered and signed those petitions.

So L.A.'s reporters need to get into the City Clerk's office right now, and put people on the record as to how ballots migrate from your polling place to the Clerk's office, and what happens once they get there. Some pictures would be nice, too. Are there lock-boxes for our ballots, or not? Do police drive the ballots from polling places, or do they ride in the back seat of some volunteers' car? I'd like to know, and I suspect you would, too.

Third World countries don't have voting safeguards. Does L.A.? Or have we completed the transition in that regard, too? Do we live in America or Zimbabwe? Should Mayor Villaraigosa's new nickname be "Mayor Mugabe?"

Access Denied

A funny thing thing happened on the way to the polls this year: the polls not only moved, but moved to inconvenient locations, apparently for no good reason.

For example, my wife's and my polling place moved from Carthay Elementary School -- which has ample parking -- to Temple Beth Am, on La Cienega. When we arrived at Temple Beth Am, however, there was no place to park for voters. There was a parking lot, but there were signs saying "No parking for voters." (I'll post photos at my website.)

To make matters worse, there is no street parking at that location between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. and 4:00 p.m. to 7:00 p.m. Well, if you work for a living, when are you most likely to try to voting? Bingo. To make matters worse, parking in the adjoining neighborhood is by permit only, and Tuesday is a street-cleaning day, which means half of the restricted parking spots are unavailable for a big chunk of the day.

Plus, we have many elderly people in our neighborhood. And I'm not talking "Logan's Run" elderly or "AARP" elderly, but the real McCoy, with wrinkles and walkers. And if you're handicapped, just how, exactly, are you supposed to exercise your right to vote if you can't park at the polls?

Now here's what makes it even creepier: our old polling place, the one with parking, was actually available for voting. Indeed, it was used as a polling place for other neighborhoods, but not ours. Does that make any sense? Of course not. It's not like each polling place was crowded, after all.

And did I mention we live in Council District 5 -- an area with voters most likely to show up to vote against Villaraigosa's hand-picked choice for City Attorney, Jack Weiss?

Nor was our neighborhood by any means the only one where the polling place was changed to a less convenient location. I got e-mail from supporters elsewhere in Council District 5, and from South L.A., where support for Jamiel's Law was strong.

Reporters need to ask the City Clerk's office which polling places were changed, why they were changed, and what measures, if any, were taken to ensure voters could actually have access to the polls once they got there. Reporters also need to ask attorneys specializing in voting rights what protections the law provides for the elderly and handicapped, and what remedies there are.

Bottom Line: Get Going, Reporters

The newspapers and television stations of Los Angeles committed massive media malpractice by failing to send any reporters to my rallies, where they would have seen hundreds of people demanding change. Those same media experts made matters worse by trivializing and ignoring the hundreds of thousands of dollars I raised from angry taxpayers who wanted better for their city.

L.A.'s lazy and pompous media arrogated to themselves the power to tell voters who was important and who was not, based on nothing more than whether a candidate raised millions of dollars. Now that the editors and reporters of this city see that they dropped the ball, they need to get going.

Whether I win or lose this particular election isn't the point. The point is, we deserve integrity in the voting process, and we deserve reporters who will actually report, not just sit in their offices and reprint the Mayor's press releases after adding their byline to same. The chickens are coming home to roost.

Aloha for now.