The most interesting voting controversy in the state this afternoon seems to be in Los Angeles County, where some non-partisan voters are apparently unaware that they have to fill in an extra bubble on their ballot if they want to vote in the Democratic presidential primary.

No one seems to have any real numbers to show whether this is a minor or major problem. But in a nutshell, here's the issue: all independent voters (registered as "decline to state") are supposed to be given the same ballot... but only those who mark an additional space on that ballot will have it counted in the Democratic primary.

But do those voters know this?

Democratic activists supporting candidate Barack Obama allege the ballot configuration is as bad as the infamous Florida "butterfly" ballot. Obama, so goes the conventional wisdom, is the one most likely to draw independent voters in California. And there are some 784,000 of these voters live in Los Angeles County.

And it gets even stranger. Our bureau chief in Los Angeles, Rob Schmitz, tells me he saw the DTS voter confusion first hand this morning in his polling place; there, Schmitz says poll workers were sidestepping the entire "extra bubble" issue by giving decline to state voters (what we call DTS voters) a Democratic ballot.

A spokesman for the LA County registrar of voters says officials are aware of the problem, but have no evidence yet that it's widespread. He also says officials have been trying hard to make DTS voters aware of the issue.

However, the same spokesman confirms that any DTS voter... voting on a DTS ballot and failing to fill in that extra bubble... will not have their vote counted in the Democratic presidential primary. And late word from LA is that Obama activists are keeping their options open for potential legal challenges should the problems appear to be significant.

Could we be calling this "Bubble-Gate" tomorrow morning? Stay tuned.