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

[Ralph Shnelvar <ralphs@xxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Evan and all:

On Thu, 22 Apr 2004 14:01:40 -0600 (MDT), you wrote:

>
>Folks,
>

[snip]

>
>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.)

Let's see, that would be about 100,000 votes to be counted.  Right?

Professional signature gatherers charge about $1 for each petition
signature.  That includes: Legible name, address, zip code, signature.  It
also includes standing around in the cold and rain.  We wouldn't be asking
that of the vote counters.



Let's say that a hand-count of a simple yes/no with 10 items would cost $1
for each ballot cast.

So it would cost $100,000 per election to count the votes.

$1.7 million @ 3% earns $50,000 per year.  I'm sure the city can do better
than that.

Thus, if they just put that $1.7 in a low-yielding bank account and they
withdrew $100,000 per year, they could run elections for - at least! - the
next 34 years.  The equipment would be rusty dust by then.



The incompetence of the County in even simple financial matters is
staggering.

Ralph Shnelvar