BOULDER
? Saying she fully expects an effort to recall her from office,
Boulder County Clerk Linda Salas on Monday took full blame for the
glacial, three-day-long ballot count in last week?s election.
?I am sure they will want to recall me or get rid of me and
that?s fine,? she said, noting that no one in her office ever
intended to slow the count and that everyone worked to make sure
every vote was counted.
?I will take full responsibility as the clerk,? Salas said.
Prior to last
Tuesday?s election, Salas had predicted that Boulder County would be
the last county in the state to tally returns, but she didn?t
foresee the problems that prolonged the process for 72 hours.
?We are all looking at this so it will never happen again,? she
said.
Ballots printed by EagleDirect in Denver apparently included
printing irregularities that caused the county?s optical scanners to
reject the ballots as unreadable. In some cases, the bar codes on
the ballots were stretched or condensed. In others, election
officials are still trying to figure out the imperceptible printing
errors that caused vote-counting equipment to reject some ballots.
EagleDirect was the sole bidder on the county?s project. The
clerk?s office asked county commissioners to allow for a single
bidder because other printers said they couldn?t do small batches of
various ballot styles and Hart InterCivic, which fabricated the
county?s new election equipment, was too expensive, according to
Boulder County elections manager Tom Halicki.
EagleDirect on Oct. 12 billed the county $143,060 for the job.
Howard Harris, president of EagleDirect, said the company will
work to track down the printing problem once samples of irregular
ballots can be provided for inspection.
?The assumption is they were going to work fine,? Salas said of
the ballots. ?Who would have known??
Ballots that were rejected by the optical scanner ? in some cases
as many as 500 out of every 600 ? had to be hand-counted by
resolution teams to determine the voter?s intent.
To accomplish the monumental manual task, the clerk?s office
called in a small army of volunteers to count ballots.
Both Harris and Salas said the printing job was rushed, which
Harris said may account for quality problems on some ballots, but he
can?t be sure until after the review.
According to Salas, printing the ballots couldn?t be started
until courts determined whether independent candidate Ralph Nader
would be included on ballots.
Harris said it is hard to determine how much of the blame should
be laid on his company.
?We believe the answer will lie somewhere between the printing
and the sensitivity of the counting machines,? he said. For example,
Harris said altitude and moisture can cause paper to expand and
contract to cause problems.
While EagleDirect has printed ballots for several hundred
elections, Harris said he believes this was the first time the
company printed ballots to be counted by machines made by Hart
InterCivic. He said neither his company nor the county knew just how
sensitive the scanners would be to printing irregularities.
Although Harris said EagleDirect typically coordinates with the
companies that make ballot-counting equipment when there are
questions about scanner sensitivity, that didn?t happen with Hart
Intercivic because there was nothing to indicate there would be a
discrepancy.
In fact, EagleDirect printed Boulder County?s primary ballots,
which were scanned without a problem, and ballot tests before the
general election seemed to go fine, Harris said.
?It all tested just fine,? he said.
However, the county printed its own ballots for the mandatory
system tests before the election, making it impossible for
EagleDirect printing glitches to be caught.
Harris said he believes ? to the county?s credit ? that part of
the delay in ballot counting was county officials? insistence that
all rejected ballots be counted manually by a resolution team.
?It made me proud, actually, that people cared that much,? he
said. ?Even when it was obvious the election was going one way or
another they made sure every vote counted.?
He acknowledged, however, the debacle doesn?t bode well for his
company.
?I would say that we?re the easiest target right now,? he said.
?I mean, Boulder County certainly had nothing to do with it as far
as they are concerned.?
