CVV in today's Rocky Mtn News

[Christian Rudolph <reindeer@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Ballots get Boulder's vote

County ditches punch cards in favor of slower-to-tally but easier-to-track paper voting

By Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain News
August 23, 2004

Boulder County was dead last in reporting results of the Aug. 10 primary. 

But officials aren't apologizing for a count that went into the following morning or the decision to go back to paper ballots at a time when other counties are moving to computer voting.


"Our job is not to be first. Our job is to make sure our voting is accurate, and if it means taking more time and being slower, that's what we're going to end up doing," said County Clerk Linda Salas.

County Commissioner Paul Danish is even more blunt in responding to demands for faster results.

"We are picking the government here, and the practice does not revolve around how quickly it can be reported on election night," Danish said.

Boulder decided last spring to replace its three-decades-old punch-card voting system with a system that, in some respects, is even more antiquated. Primary voters were handed a 81/2-by-11-inch sheet with candidates' names and told to fill in the squares with a ballpoint pen.

Salas and the commissioners adopted that process amid concerns by some residents that high-tech systems, such as touch-screen voting, are vulnerable to fraud by a sophisticated hacker.

A group called Citizens for Verifiable Voting noted repeatedly that the new systems leave no paper trail that can be independently verified. Many members of the group are computer professionals.

Similar concerns have been voiced nationwide, but feelings run especially high in Boulder, where many citizens are still seething over the 2000 Florida voting flap.

Joe Pezzillo, a CVV leader, said the slow returns Aug. 10 were fine with him.

"The citizen's primary concern is the accuracy of the vote, not the speed with which it's conducted," Pezzillo said.

Only the candidates and the "instant media" are concerned with speed, he said.

In fact, the counting process after the polls closed was decidedly high-tech.

The county uses a system called Hart Ballot Now, which scans each ballot to create an image. That image is then tallied, Salas said.

The advantage of the system is that when a ballot is in dispute, the image can be flashed on the wall for everyone to see, including poll watchers from the political parties, Salas said. Under the old system, officials determined the intent of the voter by examining the punch card, which the party observers couldn't get close enough to see.

What slowed the count Aug. 10 was the need to remove the paper ballots from their individual envelope, unfold them, smooth out the wrinkles and gather them into a neat pile to feed into one of the county's eight scanners.

The commissioners have since agreed to pay $25,000 for new ballot boxes with wider slots, Salas said, which means the ballots won't have to be folded when they are cast.

Salas said the process also was slowed by the decision to run small batches in the system's first trial.

In the November election, the clerk's office will issue hourly subtotals of the count instead of delaying an announcement until the final tally, Salas said.

The system worked well for voters, said Christian Rudolph, an election judge in the Gunbarrel neighborhood.

"I gave them my little spiel. 'This is like the SAT (test). You fill in the little box . . . ' " Rudolph said.

The biggest dispute in Gunbarrel was not over the ballot, but a spat between a husband and wife, Rudolph said.

"She kind of said in an offhand way that if he voted for (U.S. Rep.) Marilyn Musgrave that she would stop sleeping with him," Rudolph said.

Concern still exists about the accuracy of the scanners.

Pezzillo, the CVV leader, said he's less worried about hackers now but concerned about a possible computer malfunction.

"Remember the Mars Rover? NASA had billions of dollars and the brightest engineers in America, and they put this machine all the way on Mars and then they had to erase all the files to reboot the system to get it to work," Pezzillo said.

Salas, however, said the machines are tested before the count and again afterward to verify they are working.

When they are not in use, the machines are stored in locked rooms.

"We've got padlocks and chains around the doors. We don't even let the janitors in there," Salas said.

morsonb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx or 303-442-8729

http://www.rockymountainnews.com/drmn/election/article/0,1299,DRMN_36_3130316,00.html