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RE: DC Article: "Larimer Shows Up Boulder"

El Paso County, Colorado, the largest county by population in the state, rejected voting centers two years ago and relied heavily on traditional precinct balloting in the November 2006 election. Few, if any problems were noted and the counting and tabulation were swiftly completed, despite the fact we use Diebold here, thanks to an effective and hard-working county clerk and his staff. When looking at the claimed success of Larimer County, after three troublesome years, one should carefully evaluate the percentage of voters who used absentee ballots or voted early due to problems in previous elections with voting centers. Also, a voting center forces citizens to trust a demonstrably unreliable electronic poll book with no written records, as well as the electronic voting machines. I think that stretches even the most naive citizen's "trust" a bit far. 
            Chuck Corry


At 9:44 AM -0700 11/9/06, Al Kolwicz wrote:

Yes, Joe.  I saw the article, and the photo of Halicki.  I shuddered to
remember the threats he made against my person, and the heavy-handed way
that he was able to force his bad judgement upon the people.

As you know, the people that I work with are some of the top technologists
in the country.

We have not seen one peer reviewed study that concludes that vote centers
can be made secure, accurate and verifiable and provide voters with a HAVA
compliant and anonymous voting experience.  Until we have a chance to
evaluate such a formal study, we advise election officials to reject vote
centers.

Perhaps Larimer County officials should stand in front of a technical
committee of our choosing and defend their system?  I would be happy to
chair this review.

Al





-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Pezzillo [mailto:jpezzillo@xxxxxxxxx]
Sent: Thursday, November 09, 2006 9:27 AM
To: CVV Voting
Cc: Hillary Hall
Subject: DC Article: "Larimer Shows Up Boulder"


Anybody else see this article?

http://dailycamera.com/news/2006/nov/09/larimer-shows-up-boulder/
Not only do we have to look at a picture of Tom Halicki soaking up the county payroll again for cleaning up the mess he made, we also have to endure a lack of memory about our voting system, evidenced by this quote from the article:
"So how did Larimer County get all of its votes - paper and otherwise - counted by 1:30 a.m. Wednesday while Boulder County didn't wrap up counting until after 7 p.m. Wednesday?"
I don't suppose Josh Liss (or Tom Halicki) bothered to mention to the reporter that 20+ hours is actually the vendor's quoted amount of time it takes to run our ballots through that system they love to throw money at so much, eh?
And poor elections worker Carrie Haverford, who probably didn't get the memo about the system either, only got three hours of sleep. Get out your violins people. "Carrie Haverfield, voter education and outreach specialist for Boulder County, said the county may need to consider moving to a vote center system, in which the county's nearly 200 polling places would be consolidated into 40 or 50 vote centers, if it wants to expedite its vote tabulation.
"The hard thing about Boulder County is that we're one of the largest counties that still uses polling places where other counties use vote centers and can get their results in quicker," said Haverfield, who slept only three hours after tabulating votes all night."
For that matter, perhaps the county may also need to consider moving to a precinct based hand counted paper ballot, that would also make the vote go faster than using the system we've got, heck, we might have finished BEFORE Larimer County. But hey, that would require being able to figure out how to run an election without total dependence on a for-profit vendor from Texas, now, wouldn't it? Something our current elections staff is clearly incapable of doing. It's always "so much easier" to just buy whatever they have to sell us, isn't it? 

Heck, look what a great job Denver did with their vote centers!
On second thought, put away your violins and start getting out some pink slips (and I don't mean Swiss ballots, either).
Thank heavens we've got a new clerk and recorder, I propose the first order of business should be to send all these people packing. 

Joe



Joe Pezzillo
PO Box J
Boulder, CO 80306 USA
jpezzillo@xxxxxxxxx
303-938-8850



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