Election education money used for support (TC)

["Some Guy" <someguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Publish Date: 5/5/2005

Election education money used for support


By Brad Turner
The Daily Times-Call

BOULDER - Around $52,000 that was originally earmarked to help educate
voters about using Boulder County's new balloting system was spent to beef
up assistance from the manufacturer during the tumultuous 2004 election
cycle, according to county documents.

County commissioners approved a contract in April 2004 allowing the
elections department to spend $60,000 developing voter education materials
with Hart InterCivic, the company that built the county's new balloting
system.

The $60,000 figure was originally budgeted when county elections officials
were unsure what type of voting equipment the county would buy, County Clerk
Linda Salas said. At one point, officials considered a touch-screen voting
system, but later opted for Hart's $1.4 million Ballot Now system, which
scans paper ballots.

Elections officials ultimately decided they did not need the full amount to
create an education campaign. Instead, Salas said, county staff created most
of the campaign, which included pamphlets and local media advertisements,
and spent just $8,347 creating education materials with Hart's assistance.

"We really felt a lot of those things, for the cost for having (Hart) do it,
we could do it ourselves," she said.

The elections division still spent the remaining $51,653 in the voter
education line item.

They added the money to another item in the contract, a $78,000 allotment
for "support and installation" of the Ballot Now system, Salas said. In
total, the county spent $129,653 on elections assistance from Hart.

The county got its money's worth from Hart support technicians, even if the
pricetag was nearly $130,000, Salas said.

Hart employees trained elections workers and volunteers during primary
races, early voting, election week and a mock election held to test the
Ballot Now system, Salas wrote in a memo last week to the county's Election
Review Committee.

The nine-member ERC is reviewing what went wrong leading up to the November
election, when the Hart system rejected 13 percent of ballots cast in the
county because of minor printing imperfections. Rejected ballots had to be
hand-tallied, and the county's results were not counted until Friday of
Election Week.

The extra support from Hart came in handy when litigation from voting
activists delayed early testing of the system for two months, and when the
November vote tally took three days to complete, Salas said.

If the election hadn't taken three days, there might have been some extra
money that could be refunded to the county's general fund, she said.

Salas said she does not think anyone from her department took the matter to
the county board.

The commissioners should have approved such a change, according to Paul
Tiger, the ERC member who initially asked about the changes in the contract.

"This is not her budget to rearrange," Tiger said. "The money was going to
Hart InterCivic for specific line items as decided by the commissioners."

However, county attorney Larry Hoyt said commissioners deal with "big
picture" appropriations. Salas had the power to re-appropriate details
within the $1.5 million Hart contract, he said.

In the past week, Salas gave two different estimates of how much of the
$60,000 was spent. In a memo to the ERC last week, she said just under
$17,000 was used for voter outreach. On Monday, she revised that figure to
$8,347.

Brad Turner can be reached at 720-494-5420, or by e-mail at
bturner@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



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