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Hi Kell, I’d like to take the BoCC off this reply, mainly
because you’re addressing things outside of the scope ERC and I think that they
know that. I hope that Marianne and Jim can do some filtering for them. Read down for the response … -----Original
Message----- Paul, Thanks
for your comments, Paul, though I don't agree with much of it. A few
embedded qualifications to your comments are below. Lets not have too much
revisionist history. We all have hindsight and life 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. [|PT>] [|PT>] the ERC
mission and its report have nothing whatever to do with that history. However
the report does state the reasons that BoCo had to implement new systems. In
that explanation the involvement of elections activists is credited. The report does not
re-hash the finer points of public record, but does point to those events and
issues. One thing to note
is that a good deal of this background information is in the minutes from public
hearings and meetings. So you can find it there. The new members of
the BoCC came to office from this county. All of them are keenly aware of what took
place in 03. I doubt that they are having memory lapses.
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. [|PT>] [|PT>] That’s exactly
what I am saying. IT'S
NOT ACTIVISTS' JOB TO DO THE CLERK'S WORK FOR IT. THAT IS THE
JOB OF THE CLERK. [|PT>] [|PT>] True
enough, but lobbying is a sales pitch. Marketing 101 – make them want it. The
way that some of the activists went about supporting hand counts was to make
the clerk hate the idea. Back to basics.
Linda was elected, not you or me. If you don’t like what she does, elect
someone else – or lobby hard. 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.) [|PT>] [|PT>] The
committee has suggested renting NOT leasing. If you look at my recent letter to
the BoCC about vote centers you’ll see it prominently mentioned for many of the
reason that you have. We agree here, and
so does the committee. After the February BoCC
decision to purchase the Ballot Now system there was 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 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? [|PT>] [|PT>] Well the
clerk would have been looking at systems certified in the US. I just can’t
imagine her looking outside of the US. The activists (mainly Joe) uncovered
this after the 04 elections. But Beat told me that his group only started to
market the method just before the primaries in the US. So even if Linda was
snooping outside of the US, we might have doubts that she would have found it.
Just like we didn’t find it until Beat sent an email to someone here. We can’t
fix this stuff in the past. Yes we can hand
count, but the Swiss method involves using electromechanical counter. I don’t
see how we can sell hand counting if it is really done by hand. We must present a
system that is no more of a time sink than the one we have. That might be the
wrong way to look at it, but were always going to comparison shop. If we
present a system that takes more time and requires more ballot handling than
what we have now, I doubt the Clerk and the BoCC will bite. I find it hard to fault
the clerk for not buying into a system that none of 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 [|PT>] [|PT>] and the report
address that as well. Why not read it? Paul Tiger |