Re: Speaking out against vote centers 11/20/06

[Harvie Branscomb <harvie@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Al
Here is a conversation about vote centers I had just this afternoon.
harvie

At 09:00 AM 11/20/06 -0700, Cathleen Krahe wrote:
> Hi
> I think voting centers would be good as a few people showed up in El
> Jebel saying this is where I voted before (most likely early voting) when
> their voting place was in Basalt.
> Cathleen

Cathleen
the problems with voting centers are:

1) they rely on computer poll books to be sure that voters do not vote in
two places... (actually similar to early voting, but the pressure of
election day is different, as seen in Denver where electronic poll books
failed).  Since the paper poll books can not be used, if there is a
technical problem, all voting stops.  Paper poll books have a
wonderful flexibility and resistance to failure.

2) the management of paper ballots is much more difficult in case of vote
centers... an inventory of all kinds of paper ballots must be placed at
each vote center.  Vote center is a nail in the coffin of paper
ballots.  In 2008, paper ballots must all have precinct codes, so
the inventory must be managed for about 35 or more types of ballots in
Eagle County (other counties much more).

3) vote center is a big step away from simple local hand counting and
local responsibility... making the voters less recognizable, and making
it easier for election officials to provide fewer places to vote... for
example if we do election day vote centers in the RF valley, I can
guarantee that there will be only one of them not two.  Likewise
Burns and McCoy will probably not have a vote center among them.

Otherwise it could be a good idea to pick up voters at the wrong polling
place.  There is no excuse for making the Basalt voters wait in line
for an hour in El Jebel to find out that they had to go to Basalt to
vote.  This is simply bad customer service at the polling
place.  If the space for the line was after the poll book instead of
before it, the voters would have learned about their mistake  in
going to the wrong polling place much earlier.

Harvie



At 06:21 PM 11/20/06 -0700, Al Kolwicz wrote:

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     Sometimes we are able to forestall obvious disasters. By now most everyone has heard of the election debacle in Denver, Colorado, on November 7, 2006, that resulted from the dimwitted adoption of voting centers. As is common for many issues, the Equal Justice Foundation has been speaking out against vote centers for years now and I happened across a letter published in January 2005 that, together with the help of a couple of volunteers on the panel examining vote centers, helped forestall their adoption here. As a result our 2006 elections were quite uneventful though we still need to do something about our Diebold machines.
    Too bad the Colorado Springs Gazette isn't read in Denver.

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Letters
Gazette, The (Colorado Springs),  Jan 7, 2005
 
BALINK'S FOLLY
Voting centers threaten elections' integrity

Apparently County Clerk Bob Balink has never met a terrible idea for voting that he didn't like ("County might eliminate traditional polling places," Metro, Dec. 31). Balink wants to do away with one of the last few protections we have for our elections.

A basic function of precinct voting is to ensure that voters who don't reside there don't vote there. And anyone who can't find their local precinct likely isn't authorized to vote there anyway. But Balink wants to do away with that time-tested method of maintaining election integrity and hide counting ballots even deeper from public scrutiny in voting centers.

Citizen election judges in our local precinct are one of the last bulwarks against election fraud. Balink wants to replace them with people he controls and "trains." His Diebold black boxes have already eliminated any oversight of the ballot count by poll watchers and even now election judges have no idea what the Accu-Vote tabulator actually does with a ballot.

With more than 70 ballot styles in the last election, voting centers would make it almost certain that at some point voters in Fountain would be voting on issues in Monument.
The Diebold voting system used here has flunked security tests in Maryland and Ohio and was decertified in California. But that doesn't bother our county clerk, who simply ignores all warnings about computer security. Voting centers would make it even harder for citizens to discern the numerous problems with our Diebold voting machines. In turn, that would help the clerk cover his backside. From that perspective, one can understand why Balink thinks highly of voting centers. However, from the perspective of election integrity and citizen oversight, such centers are a bad idea that should die.

Charles E. Corry

President, Equal Justice Foundation
Colorado Springs

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