Friday's Meeting with Boulder City and County Clerks

["Joe Pezzillo" <jpezzillo@xxxxxxxxx>]

12/19/2004

Greetings!

Thanks to Ralph Shnelvar's efforts, Boulder City Clerk Alisa Lewis met 
with Neal McBurnett, Ralph and me on Friday afternoon at the big table 
downstairs at the City building, along with Linda Salas, Boulder County 
Clerk, and Diane whose last name I didn't get, but who manages 
financial compliance and/or matching funds for city elections, and we 
discussed the upcoming March 2005 City Election plan.

Neal and Ralph may wish to describe the concerns that they voiced 
(and/or heard) separately, such as fundamental concerns about the use 
of mail ballots, but I mostly presented information about the Swiss 
method of voting, including showing the sample ballots that quickly and 
visually explain how hand counting can actually be cheaper and easier 
than what we've got now.

Alisa graciously spent at least half an hour explaining the materials 
she will be presenting Tuesday 
(http://www.ci.boulder.co.us/clerk/agenda/2004/122104/6B.pdf) to 
support her recommendation to do a mail ballot election with the 
County's system in March 2005, including cost considerations behind the 
options she evaluated, and other very interesting details, like the 
fact that David Hart personally came to visit her to express his 
confidence in HartIntercivic's ability to print ballots that will work 
with their own opscan system, since three other printing vendors had 
apparently declined to respond due to compatibility concerns. One very 
interesting thing to me was that the cost of a mail ballot election 
will only be about $5,000 (five thousand dollars) less than doing a 40 
polling-place election (just less than half the 93 precincts in the 
city). I wonder if hand counting would lower the cost even more?!?

In short, she expressed three key concerns that led to her 
recommendation:

1. A Sense of Disenfranchisement after November and the potential that 
will lower turnout in a precinct election.

2. Retention of Elections Judges and Polling Locations, after last 
election quite a few may have been lost, don't want to overburden them

3. Partnership with County Elections Office, need for the system to 
work going forward in the rest of 2005 and beyond.

After reviewing the materials, we talked a little and then I did a 
brief presentation of the Swiss voting information and sample ballots. 
Alisa and Linda both expressed a great deal of interest in the ballots 
and methods used to do the hand counting (I think they were surprised 
at how straightforward, widely used, and quick it turns out to be), and 
also the integrated privacy envelope that saves additional costs. I 
gave Linda one of the sample windowed ballot envelopes that the Swiss 
Voting System company (http://www.swissvs.org) prepared as a mock-up 
for Florida with the perforated slot to remove the voter identification 
card from the ballots and about a dozen of the color coded, 
thumb-notched sample ballot slips.

Both Alisa and Linda expressed that they did not think that it would be 
possible logistically to do this for March, although they would 
consider it, including asking the Secretary of State if it would be 
permissible in Colorado. I expressed a confidence that it must be 
permissible, as paper ballots, hand counting, and both various sizes 
and multiple pages are already legal and in fact quite common. I told 
them that when (not if) Donetta says "No", I want to know exactly why.

Here's hoping we get a chance to reclaim our elections leadership and 
prove that we can restore our democracy starting right here in Boulder!

Joe

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