Re: John Gideon wrote on the Hart dust problem reported in Camera back in 2005.

[Paul E Condon <pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I've worked as a resolution judge today. The problem is called ghost
votes by the other judges with whom I worked. Changes in threshold
setting on the mark detector software seem to be making a dramatic
improvement in ths processing. But, to my untrained eye, there is
something very strange going on. The details of the images of marks
that I see don't fit well with any explanation that has been suggested
to me. I feel sorry for the people working on this problem. The environment
in which they are gathering data is certainly not a scientifit/engineering
laboratory. There a lot of constraints on the experiments they can 
perform, and there is a lot of pressure to perform very quickly. But
when you discover that there is a problem with the actual count you
have to announce to the press and try to deal with their questions.
I'm sure a lot of time is being wasted dealing with crazy theories
generated by the press and public. 

Part of the problem that I did see was a kind of print through of text on
the ballot onto other parts of the ballot. This was attributed to a wrong
ink used by the printer. This wrong ink remelted in the Post Office sorting
machine when the mail passed between hot rollers. (I don't think the
rollers are deliberately heated. They just get hot during normal operation
of the sorter. But I'm not sure.)

I had no problem fitting my mail-in ballot into the return-mail envelope 
for this election. The envelopes were correctly sized, IMHO.

On Wed, Nov 05, 2008 at 03:51:37PM -0700, Margit Johansson wrote:
> So why is Boulder County having problems three years later?
> (Gideon spoke with someone from the Camera, so maybe there will be more on
> this in the paper.)
> Margit
> 
> Margit Johansson
> 303-442-1668/ margitjo@xxxxxxxxx
> 
> 
> On Wed, Nov 5, 2008 at 11:07 AM, John Gideon <jgideon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <
> mailto:jgideon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx <jgideon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>>> wrote:
> 
>    Boulder Co is suffering from paper dust and dirt from the ballots.
>    This is something that we reported in July 2005 from problems in
>    Yakima Co WA.
>    http://www.votersunite.org/info/yakimaproblemreport.asp
> 
>    All it takes is a can of pressurized air to fix the problem.
>    --    John Gideon
>    Co-Executive Director
>    VotersUnite.Org
> 
>    www.votersunite.org <http://www.votersunite.org/>

-- 
Paul E Condon           
pecondon@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx