Commissioners pass the buck; Plan Boulder meet tomorrow on voting systems

[Evan Daniel Ravitz <evan@xxxxxxxx>]

Folks,

As expected, the Boulder County Commissioners today voted to sign a
contract with Hart InterCivic for some $1.7 million to buy -not
lease- a proprietary (secret) software voting system based on the
highly unstable windows operating system, BEFORE NIST and other
authorities come up with standards for electronic voting.

As in 2 previous meetings, 100% of citizens attending asked that
they NOT do this.

Commissioner Paul Danish closely questioned the envoy from the Colo.
Sec'y of State about the crucial Colorado law which makes electronic
voting particularly insecure here: Any recount must be done by the
same method as the original count. So, our election bureaucrats'
assertion that the paper ballot is the official record is very
misleading, because, after an electronic count, ONLY a repeated,
identical electronic recount is allowed. Danish asked the envoy to
beg the SoS to repeal the law.

The majority of citizens testifying asked for hand-counted paper
ballots.

Commissioner Mayer did some serious questioning, too. Commissioner
Stewart looking bored, probably because he know the other two were
only putting on a show: the outcome was already determined.
Evidence: tomorrow at noon, County Clerk Linda Sales has long been
scheduled to talk on "Questions and Answers Regarding Our New Voting
Machines." See http://bcn.boulder.co.us/planboulder/friday.html

I will be at the Plan Boulder meeting: noon -1:45 at the Creek Room
in the Boulder Public Library at 11th & Arapahoe. The Creek Room is
at the South end of the bridge over Boulder Creek. I hope other BCV
members come to shovel the snow job "our" Clerk will deliver.

The Commissioners withheld their trump card until AFTER the public
hearing was finished: they quickly calculated it would take
"hundreds" of extra election judges to hand-count an election here,
and declared it, variously, "very difficult", "impractical" and
"impossible."

(For $1.7 million, I'd be happy to organize a crew to do so. Hell,
for $50,000.)

As BCV member Mary Eberle pointed out to me later, it would be
fairly easy for volunteers to be found in a place like Boulder. A
simple email appeal would probably do it.

Plan Boulder is the powerhouse political organization of Boulder,
for over 40 years, responsible for growth control, open space and
other protections. They did write a very good letter supporting our
position to the Commissioners:

http://coloradovoter.net/bcv-archive/msg00827.html

Our last resort is the courts. I propose we each ask our local
lawyer friends if they would sue for an injunction against
electronic voting UNTIL NIST sets the standards. Here is the final
precedent cited in an article saying e-voting should be illegal:

Wesberry v. Sanders (1964) - "It is in the light of such history
that we must construe Art. I, 2, of the Constitution, which,
carrying out the ideas of Madison and those of like views, provides
that Representatives shall be chosen "by the People of the several
States"... This means that our leaders should be chosen by us, NOT
by machines whose workings can not be seen -or understood because
the software is proprietary.

http://www.ecotalk.org/VotingMachinesUnconstitutional.htm

Evan

------------------------------------------------------
Evan Ravitz         303 440 6838         evan@xxxxxxxx
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