ERC Report Draft Insults Election Reform Activists

["Joe Pezzillo" <jpezzillo@xxxxxxxxx>]

Now I can't speak for everyone or the specifics of every situation that 
occurred, but this is downright insulting, and clearly had they taken 
the time to review the record and not rely on the Clerk and her 
apologists, they would hopefully have edited this from the draft. "Chat 
Rooms"? That makes them look downright ignorant, as well.

So much for fighting for democracy and "Trustworthy Elections", I guess 
history will show that we just wanted to discredit opto-sense systems. 
Just shameful that they would print that. I smell rats.

And what's funny as well is that the Clerk's office put out more 
misinformation than anyone, remember the old "HAVA requires DREs" wool? 
How about the "Ballots don't need to be printed according to strict 
design standards as with normal optical scan ballots" quote that she 
presented to the Commissioners? Who misinformed whom?

Quoting the Draft:

"Prior to the election, various interest-group activists harried the 
Clerk and her staff. Their purpose was to discredit the opto-sense 
system and promote hand counting of ballots.  These activities started 
in late 2003 when the County chose to purchase the Hart/InterCivic  
system that it now uses. These activities continued throughout the 
primary and general  election. They included, but were not limited to: 
purposely damaging and duplicating test  ballots; launching 
disinformation campaigns in the local press; in activist ‘chat rooms’ 
on  the internet; continually harassing the Clerk and her staff with 
multiple open records  demands, then not paying the required fees for 
the labor to research the records."

Too bad, I was starting to like the report.

I also notice it never mentions the Clerk's history having had 
virtually every one of her official elections required to be recounted, 
going back to Erie, too!

Joe

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