TC story

["Some Guy" <someguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Here's the TC story - very well done
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Ballots finally tallied
By Jenn Ooton
The Daily Times-Call

BOULDER - Angry voters say Boulder County Clerk Linda Salas and other county
officials mismanaged this November's election.

Even as dozens of bleary-eyed volunteers finished hand-checking problem
ballots Friday - results were posted shortly after 7 p.m. - voters sharply
criticized Salas and the county commissioners for not reporting tallies
sooner.

"Boulder (County) deserves better," said Republican Scott Gessler, an

election law attorney who will sit on the Boulder County ballot canvassing
board next week. "(Salas) needs to get her act together or we need to find
someone who has the ability to run the election properly."

Almost exactly 72 hours after the polls closed, Boulder County's unofficial
final tallies shut the book on several hotly contested races, recalls and
ballot questions. In some cases, Boulder County's results caused upsets.
However, the county still has to verify and count about 2,500 provisional
ballots, which could still have an effect on a couple of races, notably the
University of Colorado regent at-large race and the St. Vrain Valley School
District mill-levy override.

County leaders primarily blamed the three-day delay on unfamiliarity with a
new electronic counting system and thousands of damaged ballots that had to
be manually checked. Officials also said the astonishingly high turnout
contributed to the problem.

More than 87 percent of Boulder County's 176,224 registered voters marked
ballots in this election.

"We understand people are upset and angry," said an exhausted Salas, who
late Friday questioned the Denver-based company that printed the ballots
that jammed up the tallying.

"Nothing was done intentionally," she said. "We worked nonstop."

Anywhere from 10 percent to 100 percent of the ballots in a precinct had to
be hand-checked by volunteers who spent hundreds of hours with their eyes
trained on screens doing just that.

Some of the ballots that volunteers reviewed had write-in candidates that
could not be read by Boulder County's $1.3 million electronic
ballot-counting equipment.

But thousands of other ballots that clogged the system - some were kicked
out 400 and 500 at a time - were ones with selection boxes in the wrong
place or those with smudged or uneven barcodes.

Printed by EagleDirect, those unreadable ballots were rejected by scanners.
The system was supposed to recognize the vast majority of votes.

EagleDirect president Howard Harris told Salas and other county officials he
was not sure what caused the poor printing.

The company, which printed ballots for the Brighton Fire Protection
District's three elections this year, plans to do extensive testing to
determine how the printing problems happened.

County leaders acknowledged Thursday that the election process in Boulder
was flawed, but continued to praise the expensive tallying system, calling
the 2004 election the most accurate in Boulder County's history, County
Commissioner Paul Danish said.

He said that if the county had flicked a switch and "auto-resolved" all of
the ballots cast or used the old punch-card system, several thousand votes
would have gone up the chimney.

Critics disagree.

"We might as well have not bothered to vote because our input was not
included in any of the major races," wrote Anthony Matthews to the county
commissioners.

Others, who wrote and called county officials to complain, believe Salas's
office didn't do enough to train and schedule volunteers to use the
high-dollar system that was supposed to be both faster and more accurate
than the old punch-card system.

Gessler questioned why sealed boxes of ballots were left unwatched outside
the counting room Wednesday.

"We thought security measures were incredibly lax," said Gessler. "I don't
think people walked in and stole ballots. But I think the management and the
planning of this election have been very poor. That's why I'm very critical
of it."

Times-Call staff writer Brad Turner contributed to this report.

For more election coverage, visit LongmontFYI Election 2004 --
http://www.longmontfyi.com/elections/