RE: Paper Ballots per the Swiss Voting System Method

["Paul Tiger - LPBC - Outreach" <LPBC-O@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

An issue that we have here in Boulder County and this state is initiatives.
It makes our ballots quite large. Is this addressed by such a system?
Remember we can have many initiatives and referendums and all the text for
them must be on the ballot, so the ballots themselves get to be LARGE.

Paul Tiger

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Pezzillo [mailto:jpezzillo@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, December 06, 2004 4:15 PM
To: council@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; Cvv-Discuss@Coloradovoter. Net;
commissioners@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Cc: SwissVS
Subject: Paper Ballots per the Swiss Voting System Method


Greetings Fellow Boulder County Citizens (and Others) Concerned about
Our Elections:

While I was away recently, I visited with folks from the Swiss Voting
System company who are trying to package and brand the paper ballot
methods used in Switzerland for use in other countries.

It's "simple" to implement for precinct and mail ballots, and I have to
say, I'm very impressed with the methods they use, and am now
absolutely confident that hand counted paper ballots are an achievable
reality here -- at a much lower cost than existing paper and electronic
methods -- with the option of using currency counters for a machine
count, as well, and with a greatly increased level of voter confidence.

Cost and time estimates are included in the report they have produced
to explain how to implement their methods which enable the nation of
about 7 million people to hand count the ballots and cross check the
totals in a matter of hours, not days. The company sells the report for
a few hundred dollars and offers implementation consulting and branded
certification.

The founder of the company, Beat Fehr (cc'd), gave me a copy of the
report that also includes several styles of sample ballots, including
one they prepared as an example for Florida. For full disclosure, I'd
be glad to make money selling this report and/or consulting to
elections officials and interested citizens and researchers in the US,
but as of yet, it's still all out of my own pocket.

If people are interested in seeing the materials they provided and an
explanation of how their paper ballot methods work, please let me know
and I'll be glad to share what I learned and you can see the sample
ballots and illustrations. It will only take a few minutes, and I'm
sure you'll quickly grasp the concept when you see it. How to best
implement it here may require a little more thought and effort, but I'm
sure you'll agree that we could find a way to do it and would almost
certainly see the benefits the first time we do.

If there is enough interest, I'd be glad to do a full public
presentation, perhaps even to the County Commissioners or other
interested officials. We've been able to get a room at the Library
before, I'm sure with enough advance planning we might even be able to
use the auditorium.

Please don't hesitate to contact me directly, or perhaps the CVV
mailing list can serve as a scheduling tool if people want to get
together and discuss this. You can also download the "short form" of
the report from their website, http://www.swissvs.org

Thanks for your efforts to secure trustworthy elections for Boulder
County.

Joe Pezzillo, Citizen Activist
Boulder, Colorado USA
jpezzillo@xxxxxxxxx