How does a kafka of one have issues becoming a leader? ERROR Error while electing or becoming leader on broker

Hi,

How does a kafka of one have issues becoming a leader? I am using kafka
8.0. Should I just ignore this error? How would I resolve? I just have
one kafka server in dev.

Below is how I start kafka:
/var/lib/kafka-0.8.0-src/bin/kafka-server-start.sh
/var/lib/kafka-0.8.0-src/config/server.properties

[2014-02-06 02:51:59,936] INFO Will not load MX4J, mx4j-tools.jar is not in
the classpath (kafka.utils.Mx4jLoader$)
[2014-02-06 02:51:59,964] INFO 1391209402 successfully elected as leader
(kafka.server.ZookeeperLeaderElector)
[2014-02-06 02:52:00,311] ERROR Error while electing or becoming leader on
broker 1391209402 (kafka.server.ZookeeperLeaderElector)
kafka.common.KafkaException: Can't parse json string: null
at kafka.utils.Json$.liftedTree1$1(Json.scala:36)
at kafka.utils.Json$.parseFull(Json.scala:32)
at
kafka.utils.ZkUtils$$anonfun$getReplicaAssignmentForTopics$1.apply(ZkUtils.scala:529)
at
kafka.utils.ZkUtils$$anonfun$getReplicaAssignmentForTopics$1.apply(ZkUtils.scala:525)
at
scala.collection.LinearSeqOptimized$class.foreach(LinearSeqOptimized.scala:61)
at scala.collection.immutable.List.foreach(List.scala:45)
at
kafka.utils.ZkUtils$.getReplicaAssignmentForTopics(ZkUtils.scala:525)
at
kafka.controller.KafkaController.initializeControllerContext(KafkaController.scala:535)
at
kafka.controller.KafkaController.onControllerFailover(KafkaController.scala:240)
at
kafka.controller.KafkaController$$anonfun$1.apply$mcV$sp(KafkaController.scala:111)
at
kafka.server.ZookeeperLeaderElector.elect(ZookeeperLeaderElector.scala:62)
at
kafka.server.ZookeeperLeaderElector.startup(ZookeeperLeaderElector.scala:46)
at
kafka.controller.KafkaController.startup(KafkaController.scala:470)
at kafka.server.KafkaServer.startup(KafkaServer.scala:96)
at
kafka.server.KafkaServerStartable.startup(KafkaServerStartable.scala:34)
at kafka.Kafka$.main(Kafka.scala:46)
at kafka.Kafka.main(Kafka.scala)
Caused by: java.lang.NullPointerException
at
scala.util.parsing.combinator.lexical.Scanners$Scanner.<init>(Scanners.scala:52)
at scala.util.parsing.json.JSON$.parseRaw(JSON.scala:71)
at scala.util.parsing.json.JSON$.parseFull(JSON.scala:85)
at kafka.utils.Json$.liftedTree1$1(Json.scala:33)
... 16 more
[2014-02-06 02:52:00,353] INFO [Kafka Server 1391209402], Started
(kafka.server.KafkaServer)
[2014-02-06 02:52:00,379] INFO New leader is 1391209402
(kafka.server.ZookeeperLeaderElector$LeaderChangeListener)

Thanks