Ballot shuffle and judge training

["Some Guy" <someguy@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Paul C.

Are you telling me that you weren't instructed to hand out the ballots in
random order? I think that's what you are telling me. The word 'shuffle' was
my own. The words that Linda Salas used was 'hand them out randomly'.

I wonder if Peter Richards is still on this list. I thought at I heard him
say that random hand out was something that he had heard, but others had
not. I mean others that he worked with.
What I do know is that the training that the judges were given varied from
class to class. But that is nothing new. Before I got involved with working
at the C&Rs office I had been a precinct polling judge, and in the two years
prior to my running for C&R I was a supply judge. I had a lot of last minute
judges in those two years. Judges that had to be trained on-the-fly because
the training that they received was the filling of a pail, not the lighting
of a fire.

While the ERC was beating on training and procedures, which was the largest
target of our report, many of us came to the conclusion that training isn't
all that is needed. Testing is needed.
If you take a class you'd expect to be tested on your abilities to retain
the materials. If you'd fail that test then you'd fail the class. The clerk
hasn't been interested in failing judges for lack of retention. If your
heart is beating and you are breathing, and you volunteer - you're in.
I don't mind working with octogenarians, but not all of them can be judges.
Older and wiser they might be, but are they election judge material?

The clerk and her staff themselves could need some testing. If an election
bombs, wouldn't you want to reexamine the policies and procedures to prevent
the same mistakes? ERC members and most of us on this list were completely
aware that the 04 primary did not go smoothly. We also know that the 03 mail
ballot election had serious problems. But the same failed procedures have
been used again and again. The clerk and her elections manager blamed lots
of the problems on human error. Judges received the largest part of that
criticism.
Did the training change? No. Did the same people who were blamed for the
muck ups come back for more? Yes. In fact those same people were invited
back, and then were taught the same stuff from before. The trainers didn't
want to confuse returning judges, or confuse themselves with new policies
and procedures.

The present training stinks. I liked the training the Mary Buksar gave, and
she could answer questions without having to look it up. However, if the
same questions kept coming up, then the training should have improved to
respond to those questions before they were asked in subsequent years. Mary
worked to make that happen. Mary got the boot about ten seconds after Linda
Salas arrived. It appeared to be a personality clash.

What we have now amounts to jury nullification. People really interested in
the work of elections have done their own training and research. Then they
are dumbed down by training that says, "never mind the law, just do this".
This is one of the reasons that the elections division of the clerks office
was reticent to 'hire' elections activists. A few were hired because they
persisted. Some got loud and pushy, and made it in. But in the office the
scuttlebutt was to be sure that 'activist judges' were not hired.
In my mind, these are EXACTLY the people we want as elections judges.

I am concluding here with an endorsement of Hillary Hall for clerk. Hillary
is sharp and doesn't stand for crap. She won't back failure with excuses
that blame someone else for what is her responsibility. Hillary and Linda
Flack were the primary authors of the section of the ERC report that
addressed training.
And all of us would have to recognize that Hillary isn't very partisan, even
though she is the Democratic Party chair in our county. She was highly
critical of Linda Salas and the bizarre machinations of the elections
division under Salas' direction. She is running against her own party's
incumbent.
It might not matter to endorse Hillary. She could end up being the only
candidate besides Salas. This could be more Soviet style voting, of which
our county has been famous. Don't be fooled by party affiliation. This is
about those that can manage others and those that micromanage. It is about
leadership. Hillary is a leader and a doer.

We are going to have to be diligent in our efforts to keep Linda Salas from
wasting millions on crap and then leaving the next clerk to suffer because
of it.
It won't matter how much training judges get if they aren't needed because
everything is done by computer.

BTW - since I am support Hillary and being public about it, you can bet your
ass that I won't be allowed to be a judge this year. Last year I supported a
particular candidate for CoB council and was told to take a hike, so I ran
for council in Longmont.
My advice to any of you that want to be judges is the keep your mouth shut
about support and endorsements. You can't have an opinion and be a judge. If
you are politically active (aren't we all?) Linda Salas won't let you be a
judge, unless of course you are 83 and napped through the bullshit training.

Paul Tiger


-----Original Message-----
From: Paul E Condon [mailto:pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Wednesday, February 22, 2006 3:38 PM
To: cvv-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: Secret ballot and the Colorado constitution

Paul T.,

Thanks. I think this is valuable. There are problems, but maybe not
unsolvable technical problems.

Concerning Linda Salas and ballots in random order. I was an election
judge in 2004 in both primary and general elections. I was a 'supply'
judge (who had the extra job of picking up the polling place
materials, and leading the group) I'm sure no one ever told me to
shuffle ballots for either election. Also, in the primary, the end of
day checks that we were supposed to do, could not have been done
according to the instructions that we had been given if we had
shuffled the ballots. In the general election, the instructions were
fixed, but still we were not told to shuffle. Only people who read the
newspapers carefully would have known about Linda's shuffle, and none
of the people working with me had read that carefully.

Concerning the problem of ballots being printed at multiple locations
and how to ensure that printed ID is unique: Assume that there are
less than 10000 locations at which printing takes place. Assign a
unique, non-random 4 digit ID to each printing location. For unique ID
on the ballot use a random number and the 4 digits of location
ID. Other schemes can be invented, but this is probably good enough to
show that its a solvable problem. I agree that implementing this
solution is well beyond the capabilities of BCClerk office staff. That
is a problem that must be solved.

Concerning it being unconstitutional, I think it probably is, but if
one pushes that point too much without suggesting ways to really solve
it, one is likely to find that the opponents of verifiable elections
will write an draft amendment that will actually make the situation
worse than the current one. Or a draft amendment that is just so goofy
that no one, including you and I, is willing to vote for it.