RE: ERC Report Draft Insults Election Reform Activists

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

Lets not have too much revisionist history. We all have hindsight and life
is change. Sometimes people have difficulty recalling even the immediate
past clearly.

The December 03 victory (Danish gaveled it) was that BC would not buy DRE
and would go with paper ballots. I seem to recall lots of hoots and
cheering. The election activists made that happen.

Between December and February the clerk decided to purchase the Hart Ballot
Now system. In that intervening time, before the county took her up on her
decision - there was time to discuss the replacement system with her. A few
people did.
One of the replacement ideas was hand counting, but it wasn't pursued with
the clerk as much as it was on this list. Lots of talk, but little action in
that regard.

After the February BoCC decision to purchase the Ballot Now system there was
a hue and cry from a very small number of people about using something else,
but what something else? The county had to buy something and this is what
was chosen. Apparently not your choice, but Linda was elected to make those
choices.

The highly touted Swiss Method did not appear on our collective horizons
until after the November 04 election. While you, Evan, don't appear to
relate this chronologically incorrectly, many others on this list and in the
community have.
I find it hard to fault the clerk for not buying into a system that none of
us knew about at the time the Hart system was purchased.

I try to deal in reality. I think were having enough trouble with the way
that public government works to have enough to do.
The secret government probably has problems too. Fortunately there are
enough people who believe in and want to lend support or damnation to the
secret government that it really doesn't need our help. Let the secret
government have their secret elections.
Let's worry about reality before we dance with them, and lets keep history
clean.

Paul Tiger  -- OD -- Paul Tiger, Outreach Director of the Libertarian Party
of Boulder County
Outreach@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
303-774-6383 voice and messages
720-323-0570 cell
www.LPBoulder.org
"The government that governs best, governs least."
                            Thomas Jefferson


-----Original Message-----
From: Evan Daniel Ravitz [mailto:evan@xxxxxxxx]
Sent: Monday, June 13, 2005 10:12 PM
To: Boulder County Commissioners; Joe Pezzillo
Cc: morsonb@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx; CVV Net
Subject: Re: ERC Report Draft Insults Election Reform Activists


Note that the below quote from the ERC report directly contradicts
what County spokesman Jim Burrus told the Rocky Mtn. News right
after the 2004 election debacle: "It's [the Hart system] what the
folks [we activists] wanted."

So we activists are to be blamed BOTH for wanting the system we got
AND fighting the system we got.

No doubt the ONLY people who REALLY wanted the system we got, all of
whom are on the County or Hart payroll, will be well rewarded for
this perfect example of 'government against the people' and for
doing the public's most important business in secret (inside a
proprietary computer system.)

Death to secret government of all kinds.

Evan Ravitz
1130 11th St. #3
Boulder CO 80302
(303)440-6838

On Mon, 13 Jun 2005, Joe Pezzillo wrote:

> 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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