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Mary, Thank you for you explanation about similar themes, that have perhaps caused some confusion. FYI - I went to two presentations of the Swiss Method, one of which wound down at the Walnut Brewery. I was there, along with a host of other activists. I head this little announcement off now, so I can stop engaging people privately about the Swiss Method. It has no bearing here. (only mildly) Some detail herein is not necessary, but it alleviates future questions. In November's election Councilman Roger Lange was elected Mayor, resulting in a replacement election for his former at-large position. This election takes place on the 29th of January. Currently, there are four candidates. As many of you know, in December SoS Mike Coffman de-certified a number of ballot systems or parts thereof. Boulder's Ballot Now system was partially de-certified. While the Tally system was not de-certified, the optoscan/sense system was. The issue has to do with audit, and will likely be resolved before the August primaries. However, not before the 29th of this month. To plan and execute the use of the Swiss method would have required more than a month. So what we have are ballot already printed. Since there is only one race and four candidates, the complexity is pretty slim. I am not clear what Hillary Hall is planning to tell the Longmont city council, but she has a date with them on the 17th in city chambers. So far, I haven't been able to get an official response from the clerk's office. I've been told that the best way to get this info is to go the the meeting on the 17th. Well of course I will be at that meeting, but there's something just a bit too weird at being told that the answer would be provided eight business days before the election. Last night I spoke to Longmont's city council at public-invited-to-be-heard, and I have sent them two letters and spoken in person to three of the six present members. One of the three called me outright to express support for the HAND COUNT. At least one of the candidates favors a hand count over Hall's de-certified gear. All conspiracy theories tossed aside, what matters is that a HAND COUNT is a viable option that beats all others hands down. It is a simple count of one race. My intent, as explained before, of the actual count was to have a number of piles equal to the number of candidates, plus a pile for the canvas board. The ancillary pile is for those that used their ballots as a commentary form, didn't vote, voted all, that sort of thing. Sort the ballots by candidate, put them in the piles and count them. Have several teams count them and deliver their counts to Clerk Skitt. No communication between counting teams. The city council must render a decision about how to count the election on the 22nd. That's when they officially meet. That is one week before the election. What is odd about this pushing everything down to the last moment is that Clerk Hall has put off this meeting several times. It could be that she's trying to get SoS Coffman to relent and let her use Ballot Now for Longmont. No telling without direct contact with Clerk Hall, which hasn't happened yet. One issue that I'm giving consideration to is that the Ballot Now system is designed to authenticate that ballots scanned by the system were actually printed by the clerk (or her contractor). That's part of what those nasty barcodes do. In combination with the Ballot Now database, the system should reject more than one occurrence of a ballot. Photocopies would be caught, and they have been (I was present). To insure that the process is secured from duplication ballot fraud, it might be necessary to run the ballots through the Ballot Now system only to ascertain that we are going to be counting valid ballots. Mary Eberle just suggested that a parallel count be done. In considering that we may need to scan the barcodes, we would in effect be scanning the voter marks as well. The Ballot Now system isn't going to know what the tally is, because the ballot images haven't been transferred to the TALLY system. We can avoid conflict with the SoS by simply using Ballot Now for a ballot security check and not for sense-mark. Al K and Neal M - I need a confirmation of my recollection of Ballot Now systems operation. Please help. I believe that the database holding ballot barcode information is directly online with the scanner computer. The scanner indeed has its own processor, but it is used to create an image file which it sends to the workstation computer. I am unclear if the authentication of the ballot is done before presentation to the human operator, but I believe that it is at this workstation/scanner combo where the decision is made as to whether or not this is a 'good' ballot. The DB is central and the scanner workstations are all reading it via their network. Once the overs and unders have been reconciled they are written to a flashcard with the digital representation of sense-mark for each ballot. A & N: -- Am I correct about where ballot authentication takes place? On the scanner workstation with aide of networked DB? Our concern is about where ballot authentication occurs. We don't want the clerk to move the MBB to the TALLY system. Not during the live election count. We can't stop Ballot Now from 'sensing' because it is an entire image. The clerk will always have that. It could be our audit for the public. The broken de-certified system tested by humans. Time is short on this one. It could be a first in this state. Or someone with more time than I have might look around and see what other places have done when the computer crap broke down or was otherwise incapacitated. Sarah Levison - if you're still reading this, I bet your research skills could find this pretty quick. Especially in the last few years, we've had so much trouble with HAVA, bad planning, underfunded mandates, and plain stupidity concerning elections. Maybe this is not a first and we can use some examples of SANITY in meeting with council. Paul Tiger 303.774.6383 Home 720.323.0570 Cell 303.651.7919 Business A few harmless flakes working together can unleash an avalanche of destruction. |