RE: ERC Report Draft Insults Election Reform Activists

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

All well and good Paul, but I think that we are wasting effort and time to
regurgitate the past. This thread started in response to activists that felt
that the report didn't laud them with accolades of bravery in the face of
the 'secret government'. Then on to regurgitate some argument we were having
two years ago about hand counts.

Stop - breath deeply, take a pause. Think. Why are we here? What is our
mission? Time to regroup again.

At first we simply wanted BoCo not to buy into DRE, and we succeeded. After
that things seemed to have become more muddled. Some people set out to prove
that the Hart system was a turd; others to push SVM or hand counts; and
still others pushing ballot markers and home-brew DRE.
Well now we have proof that the Hart system is a turd, and that Hart has all
the earmarks of a technology toilet. (Don't fix things, just flush them and
force the customer to buy more and newer turds).

Paul W. has some valid points here about history that we can be fairly sure
will repeat itself. So these are important.
BTW - it was the city of Boulder that Donetta gave a waiver for an audit to,
not the county. To Alisa Lewis, not Linda Salas. Not that it really matters,
but to be believed when speaking we should make sure we have our facts
straight.

Those who were at the meetings when Drew Durham was present (I think Joe and
Peter were) might recall him saying that the decision to waive the
constitution was being revisited. Outside of public view, Drew has told me
that he thought this move to be more than weird.
Sen. Ken Gordon and I talked about this while he was working on SB05-198.
Ken said that Donetta told him she could provide this waiver for barcodes.
When I pointed out that she waived the constitution and not some Title I
statute, he agreed that she should not have and could not have done what she
did.

If we are going to pursue the damnation of serialized ballots (which I think
we should) then we should be moving towards an injunction in state court
(not Boulder). Its Donetta that needs an ass kicking.
She's going to have to issue another waiver for November. Are we ready for
that?
Does anyone care?

The BoCC and clerk need the help of citizens. Help not lunacy and shouting
from the rooftops to empty chairs.
If you hate the clerk; hate the BoCC; think that you can't make a difference
because the shadow government is in control - then give up now and stay
home.
Linda will be clerk for a while longer. You can't fire her and replace her
with someone you personally like better (like yourself). The job isn't
open - yet.

We talked about a CVV rethink. Once we had a common goal. A rather specific
one. We met that goal. Let's find another specific goal and achieve it too.
Otherwise we're all spinning our wheels and all in different directions.

Could be time for a group in-person meeting.

paul


-----Original Message-----
From: Paul Walmsley [mailto:paul@xxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, June 15, 2005 12:44 PM
To: Paul Tiger - LPBC - Outreach
Cc: CVV Net
Subject: RE: ERC Report Draft Insults Election Reform Activists

On Wed, 15 Jun 2005, Paul Tiger - LPBC - Outreach wrote:

> That would be an audit, not a hand count. At the time it was unlawful to
> perform an audit. The SoS gave the city a waiver to perform an audit in
> a municipal election. She could have given BoCo a waiver for November,
> but no one asked.
>
> At the time hand counts were lawful and audits were not. Things have
> changed.

All of this talk about whether audits are or were legal or not is really
deceptive.  It ignores the reality that the Secretary of State issues
waivers to counties to let clerks avoid the letter of election law
whenever they find it convenient.

You quite point out that the state issued a waiver to Boulder County to do
a hand audit in the municipal election.  It certainly wasn't the first
time.  As readers of this list surely recall, the SoS also issued a waiver
to let Boulder County use ballots with pre-printed serial numbers on them.
This waiver had the distinction of waiving an article of the Colorado
Constitution, rather than just a measly administrative election rule.

Furthermore, it certainly was not clear that audits were illegal under
last year's election law.  Usually people who claim this rely on the
section that stated that recounts must be done with the same process as
the count.  But a "recount" is a statutory term of art -- if the audit
procedure was incorporated into the original counting process, then it
certainly wouldn't be a "recount."

I think that a more accurate description of the reason why a strong audit
was not performed last year is that the County Clerk's office didn't want
to do it, Hart InterCivic didn't want to do it, and the Secretary of
State's office didn't want to do it, so it didn't happen.  And let's be
realistic: why should they want to do it?  There's no upside for them.
It's more work for them.  And if there was a discrepancy in the numbers or
in the process -- which was certainly possible, with my experience with
the Hart system -- then everyone in the process looks like a fool.

My sense is that all of the hot air last year about the supposed
impermissibility of audits was just chaff around the reality that it was
the last thing that the bureaucracy and the vendors wanted.

As an aside, it would be quite interesting to make a CORA request to the
Secretary of State to find out how many of these waivers have been issued
over the past few years -- and for which rules.


- Paul

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