RE: ERC Public Hearing Tonight

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

Thank you Paul ... now we're hearing some constructive ideas.

Jay Harbour - committee member and someone who worked closely with the
systems - stated something similar. During our third meeting we witnessed
the operations of the scanners. Everyone quickly noted that the scanning
hardware/software systems were not programmed to deal with ballots with any
sort of anomaly.
Jay wanted to be able to reject these ballots and set them aside. The system
forced the operators and resolution team to deal with the ballots that were
problematic immediately after scanning.
Hart stated that for ballot security reasons that the operator would not be
permitted to delete a scanned ballot from the scanned stack in the computer.
This could have easily have been done. Even if a ballot manage to be scanned
twice, a duplicate check would have discovered that. Such a check is done
both with batches and with the entire election. (done twice).

Besides Jay's thoughts on simply rejecting and deleting the scanned ballot
and moving it to another process, I saw another option. (as did others).
That is for the scanned ballot to be moved to a temporary database table,
and then dealt with separately after the auto-resolve ballots had been dealt
with.

Paul W mentioned in a meeting with Dick Harris and myself that the Kodak
scanners are equipped with print head. Ostensibly, we could mark ballots in
need of manual resolution with a code that would identify them as special in
some way. 'Unrecognizable'; 'overvoted'; 'damaged'; 'write-in'. Pretty easy
to sort the rejects at that point - much the same way as Swiss ballots get
sorted into piles.

Hart does not employ the use of the print heads; they've refused to alter
the software, and lay all the blame for the problems with the printer of the
ballots. Hardly helpful. We also know that they applied TX elections law to
the operations of our systems. That whole business of not counting ballots
unless all the pages were present, and not using the computers to resort the
ballots in page order has noting to do with elections law in CO. It does in
TX, although no one can understand why TX elections laws would be so stupid.
This same stupidity was experienced in Orange County.

The software is fully capable of managing the ballots; storing them in
temporary tables until resolved; deleting them for re-scan; marking ballots
with anomalies; etc. Hart just doesn't want to do that. I think that they
are afraid to admit that their creation is brown - not ready for prime
time - and open themselves to civil and criminal liabilities.

Paul C suggests we dump Hart as the software vendor. What a novel idea!
Hart's caveat for support is that we not change the systems or software.
Since the support that they've given is so poor, why continue with them? We
own the hardware and most of the software. Why not roll our own?
My read of the contract looks like we could modify the Hart software to our
hearts content, as long as we doing sell that modification or creation. The
contract prevents BoCo from becoming a competitor to Hart, but not from
altering our stuff. It is our stuff, we paid for it. All we risk is loss of
support. WHAT SUPPORT!?

paul t

paul

-----Original Message-----
From: Paul E Condon [mailto:pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, April 20, 2005 2:21 PM
To: cvv-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: ERC Public Hearing Tonight

If it is a given that BC will continue to use Hart equipment, then what
is needed is a new set of scanners with reject hoppers and code that
records in a control file which ballots have been sent to the reject
hopper. Then resolution teams only look at the stuff from the reject
hopper in a second run. Or maybe I misunderstand the various kludges
in Hart software. To me holding up the whole input stream when one
item needs to be resolved is a really wierd design decision. Hart
should be fired and a new software provider hired, and a new hardware
provider, also.

Paul C


On Wed, Apr 20, 2005 at 12:26:40PM -0600, Some Guy wrote:
> I'd love to here suggestions on how write ins can be efficiently handled.
> I'm sure the whole committee and the clerk would like to hear that too.
>
> So far all I have heard is suggestions to restrict ballot access. AKA - no
> write ins. That won't fly with me or too many other people.
>
> Some Guy
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mary Eberle [mailto:m.eberle@xxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Thursday, March 03, 2005 5:24 PM
> To: Some Guy
> Cc: Lpboulder; Cvv-Discuss@Coloradovoter. Net
> Subject: Re: ERC Public Hearing Tonight
>
> Will someone please mention the following to the panel? In an election
> with write-in candidates, every batch of ballots that has even one
> write-in vote will need input from the resolution team. This approach
> is not efficient and will definitely slow the counting.
>
> I hope everyone saw the article on p. 1 of today's Daily Camera saying
> that we will have some hand-count checking of the March 8 results.
> Yeah, team!
>
> Some Guy wrote:
>
> > The Boulder County Elections Review Committee will have a public hearing
> at
> > the Longmont Senior Center this evening at 6:30pm.
> > 910 Longs Peak - Longmont
> > 3 blocks west of Main (Hwy 287) on Longs Peak (the 700 block of Main).
> >
> > SG
> >
> >
> >
> > .
> >
>
>
> --
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>

--
Paul E Condon
pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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