Re: Boulder County's counting crawls: one election judge's experience and wish for hand counting

[Mary Eberle <m.eberle@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

We had seven (7 !!!) sworn-in election judges in precinct 134 in Boulder 
County (at the County Mental Health Center building at Broadway and Iris 
in north Boulder). Our voters cast less than 100 ballots. I think the 
totals were 73 paper ballots, 5 provisional ballots, and 14 machine 
ballots. If we had been permitted to hand count, we had plenty of room 
to count the ballots afterward by the reliable sort-and-stack method 
used in many New Hampshire precincts. A new team of fresh election 
judges could have shown up to relieve any judges who thought that 
beginning at 5:30 Tuesday morning had made the day long enough. I 
predict, however, that many judges would have stayed on to help do the 
counting. Doing this task would be a reward after explaining over and 
over to voters to mark the choice completely, not with just a check or 
an X, etc., etc. And of course we had to count the ballots anyway and 
organize them top up to speed the machine scanning.

Lest anyone think that it would have been a good idea to ask more voters 
use the eSlate Hart voting machine, here is some contrary information:

Our machine worked correctly but was missing a special connector that a 
paraplegic would use to vote with a "sip and puff" device. Fortunately 
(on all levels), no such voter came to our precinct. In fact, no 
handicapped person came at all. About half of the 14 people who voted on 
the machine were just very young and either unaware of the hazards of 
electronic voting or chose to ignore them; the rest were primarily baby 
boomers who seemed to just want to show off their computer prowess 
(according to many of their remarks).

To vote the entire ballot (more than 50 selections) took longer on the 
machine. Of course, some people skipped certain parts so finished more 
quickly. There was no time limit enforced. A few voters took almost 30 
minutes on the machine, but no one was waiting so it didn't matter. Some 
voters took that long with their paper ballots also. We never had more 
than two people waiting (and then for only a few minutes) except at the 
start of the day when about ten people came in at once. We had four 
paper ballot booths. In the afternoon and evening, several periods of 
time passed with no voters present at all.

Our precinct shared the room with another precinct, which had five paper 
ballot booths (our voters could use those booths if ours were full). 
Their eSlate voting machine did not work at all after several set-up 
attempts, and two technician visits were required to solve the problem. 
It finally came up at about 11:00. Only one voter used it.

All this description makes one wonder if we had not had the statewide 
push for mail ballots and early voting, could we have accommodated 
everyone with a wait of an hour or less and could we have done all the 
counting, at least of the presidential race if not the other major 
races, in the precinct on election night? If so, wouldn't Boulder County 
have something to crow about?

In November 2004, I was also a Boulder County election judge. I think we 
had 450 voters that day. There was a line that lasted until 9:30, but no 
line existed after that point. More paper ballot voting booths (pretty 
inexpensive compared to Hart equipment) would have allowed the line to 
move faster, but no one complained, in my presence anyway. If the 
weather had been bad, that might have been different, however.

Mary

Mary C. Eberle
1520 Cress Court
Boulder, CO 80304
(303) 442-2164

angielayton@xxxxxxxx wrote:
> I remember when we were hearing that "there were no problems with this 
> system".. and the reason they were decertified is because Coffman did 
> bad things to ballots, and blahblahblah.
>
> Rep. Mary Hodge became a believer after her own vote was switched.  
> Suddenly we have "dust" casting votes. 
>
> If they'd just had people tally up this stuff at the precinct level, I 
> expect they'd be done already.  Even if they had to count up the judges 
> tally on their toes. 
>
> Angie Layton