Re: Boulder City election - 8 March 2005

[Peter or Alison Richards <aprichards@xxxxxxxx>]

To:  CVV group

From:  Peter Richards

Date:  Weds. 10 Nov. 2004

We have an interesting situation in the upcoming Boulder City election,
to be held on Tue. 8 March 2005.

This is to elect someone to fill out Will Toor's term, who has been
elected a Boulder County Commissioner.

The Boulder City Clerk last night told the City Council that she would be
consulting with the County Clerk about what system - method to use in the
upcoming March election.

She would offer some options, and the Boulder City Council would make the
choice of which method to use in the election.  This is an opportunity to
go back to a much simplier system, or ??

One remaining question is how many issues will be on this March ballot ?

I will check with the Boulder City Clerk and see if the answer is known.

Bye,  Peter Richards


On Tue, 9 Nov 2004 18:54:47 -0700 (MST) Evan Daniel Ravitz
<evan@xxxxxxxx> writes:
> 
> Folks, below is approximately what I said to City Council tonight. 
> 4
> of the 9 were nodding in apparent agreement. Crystal Gray remarked
> that she is one of the 130 who volunteered to hand count the
> election.
> 
> The City Clerk noted that there is going to be a special election
> 3/8/05 to select Will Toor's replacement when he becomes County
> Commissioner. Another man spoke to say he didn't want them to use
> electronic voting.
> 
> 
> Council,
> 
> Boulder County COULD have set a model for the rest of the country 
> IF
> it did what ALL who testified at 2 long hearings wanted who were 
> not
> on the County or Hart Intercivic payroll: We ALL said DON'T buy an
> expensive proprietary, secret electronic system to count votes
> BEFORE NIST and IEEE have issued standards for electronic voting.
> 
> MOST of us asked for hand-counted paper ballots. This is what's
> still used in Canada, Britain, Germany and many other countries.
> Hand counting is:
> 
>         Public: Poll watchers watch as their neighbors count. Poll
> watchers can only stare at a computer now, as the software is
> secret.
>         Cheaper  $1.82/vote in Canada  vs. $3-6 here
>         Most accurate according to an MIT/Caltech study
>         Employs lower-income locals, instead of high-priced
> outsiders
> 
>         MUCH faster than last week's Boulder election: the same 
> poll
> workers count their precinct's ballots.
> 
> In 3 days I got over 130 Boulder County voters to volunteer over
> 1000 hours of their time to count this election FOR FREE! If the
> county had cooperated, they could have found thousands of 
> volunteers
> by asking for them in our utility bills, and other media.
> 
> Instead the County spent our millions for an inferior system using
> secret software in the scanner, the central tabulator, and the
> Windows operating system used by the tabulator. EVERY security
> expert knows Windows is the most hackable and unstable system.
> 
> If government was by the people, instead of politicians, we would
> learn from this hard lesson and change our direction. But the 
> County
> shows NO inclination to use hand counting until NIST has 
> established
> voting standards.
> 
> So, since YOUR images aren't on the line, and since the City is the
> largest client of Boulder County Elections, we ask you to either 
> get
> the County to do what the citizens want, or for the City to hold
> elections for its citizens using hand-counted paper ballots at 
> least
> until NIST issues its standards.
> 
> 
> 
> 
>