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Panel will examine delay in vote count By Berny Morson, Rocky Mountain
News BOULDER - A seven-member panel will try to get to the bottom of why the county took 72 hours to tally votes after the Nov. 2 election, commissioners decided Wednesday. "We certainly understand that getting a count in three days isn't what citizens in Boulder wanted," said County Commissioner Tom Mayer. "We all feel that way."
Under Mayer's proposal, adopted 3-0, the commissioners will choose four panel members and Salas will choose three. "These would be major citizens of our community," Mayer said. The panel will be selected from applications to be submitted to the commissioners by Nov. 24. No date has been set for the panel to report. However, the next election comes in March, when the city of Boulder replaces council member Will Toor, who becomes a county commissioner in January. Boulder County conducted the Nov. 2 election on paper ballots after some residents voiced concern that an electronic system would be subject to tampering. The paper ballots were counted by electronic scanners. The main cause of the delays is suspected to be bad ballots, some of which contained distorted bar codes. The scanners came to a halt every time they encountered a bad ballot, estimated to number in the thousands. Election judges had to tally those votes by hand, race by race. The ballots were printed by a Denver firm, Eagle Direct, and a subcontractor hired by the company. Neil McClure. of Hart InterCivic, the company that manufactured Boulder's election counting system, said his firm's machines were not at fault. The machines were designed to catch irregular ballots, and that's what they did, McClure said. He said Hart has run 10 million test ballots through its system without incident. "And you know where we get our ballots? Kinko's," McClure said. County Commissioner Paul Danish defended the $1.2 million system. "Although the Boulder County count has been very slow, I think it has been accurate," Danish said. The sensitive software that recognized the bad printing also caught ballots that had been marked in unconventional ways, allowing judges to interpret the voter's intent. Other systems would not have counted those votes, Danish said. "If that's what makes us screwy and flaky, then I'll be screwy and flaky," Danish said. The tab for overtime and other costs associated with the lengthy vote count won't known for at least a week, when workers file time sheets. "I'll take my digitalis before I look at them," said Nancy Jo Wurl, the chief deputy clerk. Copyright 2004, Rocky Mountain News. All Rights Reserved. |
