Interesting that you are suddenly turned off by the last page of the report.
Maybe you didn't realize this, but this is a report about the elections and
what slowed it down. The last section of the report specifically points to
issues that were beyond the direct control of the clerk.
You've picked on something that relates to you personally. This report is
about the election, not about you, unless you added to the increased time it
took. Which in part you are, but not to such an extent as to make you the
main character in the story.
Some facts to note: The recount of 03 was self imposed. No one ordered Ms.
Salas to do it, she did it because she thought it was needed.
The recount of 04 was demanded by law. There were two recounts. One for the
SVVSD tax override and the other for the race for CU Regent-at-Large between
Steve Bosley and Jennifer Mello. This was not an entire election recount.
The recount in Erie was also demanded by state law, because once again a
race had a less than half a percent margin.
So what we have is Linda Salas following the law. This is reality. Try not
to invent a new one, it is too hard to follow.
Paul Tiger
-----Original Message----- From: Joe Pezzillo [mailto:jpezzillo@xxxxxxxxx] Sent: Monday, June 13, 2005 2:54 PM To: CVV Net Subject: ERC Report Draft Insults Election Reform Activists
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
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