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.Yes, but does the final report credit these activists wih forcing the County Clerk to reverse its decision to purchase DREs? Remember, before Al, Joe, Neal, Paul, Evan, CVV, et.al, the only decision for the County to decide was which DRE system to purchase, not whether.
For that influence alone, the County ought to have prostrated itself before CVV.
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.You seem to imply that if the County didn't pursue the quite legitimate option of hand counting it's the fault of activists for not investing sufficient additional hundreds of hours of their own time and money researching and marketing the idea to the County.
IT'S NOT ACTIVISTS' JOB TO DO THE CLERK'S WORK FOR IT. THAT IS THE JOB OF THE CLERK.
In addition to suggesting hand counting, activists (back in December 2003) urged the County to lease/rent rather than purchase. Reasons were clearly argued: any significant purchase would almost ineveitably lock the County into a largely untested system, no matter how unreliable it subsequently proved. That seems to be the case, doesn't it?
Also, leasing rather than buying would allow the national election commission time to establish credible standards and companies time to develop product that would meet those standards.
Also, it would allow time to investigate hand counting of paper ballots.
(I was not initially enthusiastic about hand counting, but evidence came to light about the efficacy of hand counting, in no small part thanks to Evan's constant hammering on the subject and Joe's actually bringing someone from Europe to show us.)
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.See above. The County could have leased/rented. One company was so eager for that opportunity to prove it's product it even offered to run an election for free, right?
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.Of course, the Swiss method has been around for decades and no one in County lifted a finger to research it or any other hand counting methods used for centuries throughout planet Earth. It took a bunch of amateurs to introduce to the Clerk what the Clerk's office should have researched a year or two earlier on its own.
Don't belittle acitivists because they on their own initiative and dime didn't do the County Clerk's work in a more timely manner.
And, regardless, it's not too late to adopt hand counting, is it?
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.See above: the Clerk initiated no research into the possible options, instead opting for the siren song of corporate sales pitches.
My best take is that the County Clerk neither made wise decisions from the beginning nor competently managed the system it did purchase: poor analysis (it was clear to me as late as November 2003 that key people in the Clerk's office had not even read HAVA!) and poor performance.
kell
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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