7/23 Camera Greenlee column: Elections need gadflies who push reform

Daily Camera
July 23, 2006
http://www.dailycamera.com/bdc/opinion_columnists/article/0,1713,BDC_2490_4862263,00.html

Voting isn't the simple matter it should be. Remember the butterfly ballot, hanging chads along with lost, misplaced or uncounted ballots in 2000? Those problems happened in the good, ole technologically advanced U.S. of A, - not in some Third World emerging democracy.

After the 2000 fiasco, our Congress came up with one of its typically bungled remedies and ridiculously called it the Help America Vote Act. Although well intentioned, it doesn't entirely satisfy the requirements of being the definitive answer for ensuring fair and valid elections.

I've been interested in voting methods employed here in Colorado since the 2000 election. For a time I worked with a few local concerned citizens like Al Kolwicz, who has done an incredible amount of work learning about and attempting to improve voting practices here in Boulder as well as in the entire state. Some consider Al to be a pain in the tail, but the guy at least knows how the system operates, what's wrong with it and, most importantly, how to fix it. Too bad he has to nearly arm-wrestle public officials who should listen to the guy rather than lawyer-up or sit on their hands.

When I first took a look at how voting is conducted in our state, I was struck by how many of the details on conducting elections are left up to individual county officials. Although our secretary of state is empowered to oversee elections, the reality is that each elected county clerk makes up many of her own rules. No two counties appear to conduct elections in the same way.

HAVA was supposed to make a difference. Well, it hasn't. As Kolwicz and others point out, we still have a long way to go in making our elections open and honest. He notes that we are not yet at the point where anyone can be sure that "every eligible elector is empowered to vote once, that every eligible vote is counted once, and that every legally cast ballot is secure and anonymous."

You would expect we would have made more progress over the years in satisfying these rather simple but entirely necessary parameters. The fact we're still debating how to do it is somewhat disturbing.

Wall Street Journal editorial writer John Fund has written that: "People are fed up with mediocre candidates, gerrymandered districts and uncompetitive elections." He suggests that far too many citizens believe that their votes don't count or make a difference. Some simply don't believe the election results. There are still thousands of marginally competent people who still believe George Bush stole both of the last two presidential elections - many of these folks are your neighbors.

In 2004, I volunteered as an election judge here in Boulder County. I just wanted to see a little bit of how things actually worked here. You might recall that it was the big Bush/Kerry challenge and voter turnout was huge. At our polling place, lines formed from the time voting began until just before the polls closed. I was impressed. Things went very smoothly. The biggest issue we had concerned provisional ballots or the occasional person who came to the wrong polling place. We left about an hour after polls closed to wait for the results.

Unfortunately, those results didn't come easily or quickly. You might recall that Boulder voters had to wait days to find out who won what. Of course, it made absolutely no difference what Boulder voters thought when it came to re-electing George Bush. But all of the local issues were left undecided for far too long.

Boulder County didn't HAVA clue. That's just one reason Al Kolwicz is concerned about the decisions made by local officials when it comes to selecting the right equipment along with the right procedures to employ in future Boulder County elections.

One big issue confronting Kolwicz right now involves guaranteeing anonymous ballots for both coming elections. Al contends that including bar codes or serial numbers on the ballots tie back to the voter and is a problem because it's not constitutional in Colorado. Voters and votes must be kept anonymous; if they're not, Colorado's secretary of state is responsible for fixing things. She isn't.

Voters are entitled to know that when they take the time to vote, their vote should be counted and mean something. That's why folks like Al Kolwicz play an important role in making our public officials accountable.

Bob Greenlee is a businessman, philanthropist and former mayor of Boulder. Reach him at robertdgreenlee@xxxxxxx