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By Jenn Ooton BOULDER ?
Irritation with Boulder County?s vote-counting machinery mounted Wednesday
as agonizingly slow tallying dragged on.
As of 8 p.m., election judges had counted 91,567 ballots, which
included 67 of 230 precincts and early and absentee ballots. The county
has 176,224 registered voters. No votes for precincts in Longmont,
Lafayette and Louisville had yet been counted.
?There is growing frustration and concern that we don?t have any
precinct returns at nearly 24 hours after the polls closed (Tuesday) ?
especially after the expense of the new system,? said Longmont Mayor Julia
Pirnack, one of many officials to question Boulder County?s new $1.3
million computerized ballot-counting equipment.
Elections officials expect to finish counting regular ballots today,
which would allow them to start on the approximately 2,500 provisional
ballots marked by voters Tuesday. The county has 12 days to tally those.
But even if results are available for all precincts today, Boulder
County is still likely to be the last county in the state to report
results. A handful of votes remained untallied in Jefferson County on
Wednesday evening.
Boulder County officials blamed the delays on high voter turnout,
multiple-page paper ballots and ballot-resolution team shortages.
?It?s like driving a new car,? Boulder County spokesman Jim Burrus
said. ?The first time you slam on the brakes, it?s not a smooth stop. It?s
kind of a jerk. We?ve got a new car. We?re learning how to drive it.?
Burrus said snags such as a batch of ballots with unreadable bar codes
? nearly 300 ? that caught judges off-guard at 3 a.m. also contributed to
the problem. That entire group of ballots had to be manually checked.
Frustrated local and state candidates repeatedly checked in with
Boulder County officials Wednesday to ask what was slowing the process.
?I just wonder what they?re doing down there with eight machines,?
Senate District 17 Libertarian candidate Bo Shaffer said. ?And they say
it?s because we are using paper ballots, but we?ve always used paper
ballots.?
Tuesday?s election was the second time county voters used the BallotNow
system, made by Hart InterCivic of Lafayette, which optically scans paper
ballots. The system is used by 35 counties and governments in seven other
states, although only Boulder County uses it in Colorado.
?It doesn?t make me happy,? Boulder County Commissioner Ron Stewart
said after peering in on election officials plodding through thousands of
yet-uncounted ballots. ?If I knew then what I know now ? that it?s as
difficult to count as it is ? I don?t know that I would have wanted to
vote to purchase (this system).?
Jenn Ooton can be reached at 303-776-2244, Ext. 389, or by e-mail at jooton@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx. | ||
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> I am very concerned about the vote counting as a Boulder County
> resident, but so far I have no reason to suspect that there is
> anything "wrong" with Boulder County's methods. They are just slow.
> We
> must be patient.
>
> I am also very concerned that the presidential election in Colorado
>
> has been "called" before Boulder's votes have been counted. It would
>
> be a terrible ripoff if the counting is stopped for any reason
> before
> it is finished.
>
> I have contacted some other local people about these concerns, and I
>
> hope people on these lists will also follow up.
>
> Furthermore, we all need to redouble our efforts to change
> Colorado's
> prohibitions against hand recounting in computer-counted elections
> and
> against statistical checking of a certain number of ballots in
> computer-counted elections.
>
> Mary Eberle
>
> Some Guy wrote:
>
> > Well here we are, two days past the election and only 53.5% of the
> ballots
> > in the county have been tallied. 75 of the 227 precincts.
> >
> > We asked for paper ballots, and we got it. We also got slow, but I
> am okay
> > with that. I think that we should have expected that. I've heard
> that the
> > first election done with the DataVote system in the 1970s also was
> slow.
> >
> > Anyone concerned with what's going on here in Boulder County? I
> haven't seen
> > any comments on this list about that.
> >
> > Any ventures to guess why; or talk about if BC has experienced
> malfunctions;
> > or problems with the humans; or much else.
> >
> > I've only been perturbed by the Daily Camera's predictions used as
> factual
> > material. They've predicted the outcome and stated it as fact back
> when only
> > 26.8% of the Boulder County vote was in. The other newspapers were
> more
> > careful and told their readers that the bottom line wasn't too
> sure on
> > Wednesday morning.
> >
> > I was wondering if anyone knew what had happened in Grand County?
> Yesterday
> > morning they still hadn't reported any figures. Did the ghost of
> Marvin
> > Heemeyer drive the phantom bulldozer through the virtual voting
> booth?
> >
> > Any signs of stupid polling tricks here in Colorado? This is
> > ColoradoVoter.net So I'm wondering with all of the watchers that
> were
> > watching in Colorado if any of them saw anything that looked odd?
> > Were the watchers trained to know fraud if they saw it? Or were
> they just
> > looking for polling place irregularities? There certainly were
> enough of
> > those, and many incidents right here in our county.
> >
> > Just wondering if any one here on this list has a care about what
> has
> > occurred in Boulder County. Maybe y'all are sure that things have
> gone just
> > fine, or have resigned yourselves to believing that it was all
> screwed and
> > there's nothing to be done about it.
> >
> > Of the 64 Colorado counties, in Boulder the ballots are still
> being tallied.
> > Everyone else is done and have been for a while.
> > I can't believe that the CVV and CFVI groups are so quiet about
> Boulder. Or
> > maybe just not well informed.
> >
> > Some Guy who is just wondering
> >
> >
> >
> > .
> >
>
>
>