Plan Boulder's letter to Commissioners

[Evan Daniel Ravitz <evan@xxxxxxxx>]

I got Plan Boulder, the folks responsible for Open Space and growth
control in Boulder since the 50s, to send this letter... Evan


February 19, 2004


Boulder County Commissioners
Boulder County Courthouse
13th & Pearl Streets
Boulder, CO 80302

Re: Selection of Election Equipment

Dear County Commissioners:

PLAN Boulder County would like to comment on the proposed Hart
InterCivic Optical Scan system for voting in Boulder County. We
have the following suggestions and concerns:

Trustworthy elections require voter-verified, full-text, physically
marked paper ballots.

The county should lease equipment until the technical standards
required by the HAVA have been finalized.

The Elections division must incorporate procedures to hand-count a
statistically significant random sample of ballots to verify the
machine counts are accurate.

Any contract for purchase or lease should allow full public
disclosure of the software used in any voting machines or vote
counting machines. This is necessary to assure accuracy and
reliability.

Voter confidence in the reliability of elections is essential to
our democracy. We hope you will take these comments into
consideration in negotiating a contract for voting equipment.

Yours truly,

Claire Levy

PLAN Boulder County Vice-Chair
Post Office Box 4682 Boulder, CO 80306