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The purpose of the committee was to advise the county
on which was the best-in-show for DRE. The only people stuck on the idea (lies; misrepresentation;
or simply the inability to read HR3295) that HAVA had a deadline sooner than
Jan 06 was the SoS and the media. The only deadline that did exist before 06
was the end-of-life for card punch systems. Boulder’s card punch readers had all malfunctioned.
Only one opto reader still functioned. Paul Danish found some guy in Iowa that
rebuilt them and thought that BC would be able to repair theirs and keep using
them. The SoS told the Boulder Clerk that this was not doable. And we believed
her. But even if we’d continued to use the card system, it would have been
terminated by the end of the past election. So spending a something like $100K
on revamping a system that we could only use for four more elections didn’t
seem wise. So the committee was formed and our job was to pick a
DRE. Some people are and were misinformed of the mission of
that committee. If asked to do a job and committed to do it, I will do it to
the best of my ability. If I see things that look wrong, then I will inform
people about it, but if it is outside the scope of my work, all I can do is
suggest. You and I and Al suggested to many others that
something wasn’t kosher. Other people got involved and the BOCC was lobbied not
to purchase DRE until after the mess had been cleaned up (standards; open
source; etc.) The decision by the BOCC to pay for the paper scanners
that we have now are part of the result of not buying DREs. After the December
12th BOCC decision not to buy DREs they immediately asked Linda to
fill in the blanks. While members of this group advocated hand counts and
changes in legislation to allow for hand recounts or statistical samples:
nothing resembling that passed the state assembly. So Boulder had to do something. They could have hand
counted the entire county or even parts of it. They didn’t want to, and they
didn’t have to. I have to agree that there are procedures and policies
that don’t fit in with the way the election is run now, or anything outside of
the realm of using the punch card machines. I’d even go further to say that I
believe that there were policies and procedures being used in BC elections that
should have been ‘fixed’ years ago and should not have been used since Boulder
started mail-in elections. Anyone who participated in the past two mail-in ballot
elections held by this county knew that there was little order to the
management of the entire schmear. In 03 the issues surrounding SB102 muddied
the waters and the elections division was far more worried about how to ID a
voter than the security of the entire election. CAMBER takes the lead on these
issues and have pointed them out many times. So Kell – you’re correct and I concur, that the clerk’s
office has been less than attentive to the planning of this election than we
might like. And you’ve worked there and understand some of the issues. Lots of
logistical and personnel planning is necessary, but above all – well trained
staff. It’s the training that I have the largest problem
with, however that could be just me. I never settle for anything that I am
told, my mind is too inquisitive for that. I have come to realize that it is not that some people
don’t care about an issue or can’t see a problem; it is that unintended
consequences aren’t something that they even think about. Even if directed to
give an issue a larger scope, they don’t succeed because they were never
trained to think that way. I many ways I cannot fault Linda Salas for whatever
the hell it is that went wrung, because her training is that of a clerk and
manager. I don’t expect her to know about thermal effects on the hysteresis characteristics
of led emitter/detector pairs in industrial scanners and why overall room temperature
is going to affect that. What could be faulted, with more than just Linda, is
taking the word of a vendor of a beta product as gospel without testing. paul -----Original
Message----- Paul, You didn't think what was
true? That there wasn't
any Committee recommendation? That it was a rubber stamp? Or what? Basically, CVV arose
because the Citizens Review Committee didn't represent the citizens'
interests. Had it genuinely represented the citizenry (or come even
remotely close to representing the citizenry) then all the issues 1st raised by
people like Kolwicz, you, and me on the Committee (back in August and
September 2003) would have been addressed. Since those issues
weren't addressed, or were brushed off, CVV in exasperation/frustration
arose. I don't agree County
officials were "leaping before they looked." There was ample
info in the public press about the dangers of electronic voting and they knew the
dangers and risks involved. They chose to ignore those problems until CVV
(and other citizens around the state and the country) embarrassed them and
other election officials into backing down. HAVA never forced squat
on them. All that "deadline by 2004" was absolute
bullshit. Anyone who read HAVA (as I did) could see that.
Absolute bullshit that "everyone must purchase DREs by
2004." Stop making excuses for
poor research, plannning, decisions, and worse implementation. kell |