In early 2003, Boulder County started the process of transitioning to a new voting system, both because the old DataVote punch card system had worn out, and because federal money was available via HAVA to replace the old system. In the 2003 mail ballot election, Boulder County used leased equipment.

Boulder County issued a Request For Proposals for a new voting system to replace the county's existing DataVote punch card system. The county narrowed an original selection pool of eight vendors down to four. More information about these finalists is available at VendorsUnderConsideration.

CVV met in early November 2003 and formulated a PositionStatement against the use of the Direct Record Electronic machines that the County was considering.

Boulder County's November 26 press release: http://www.co.boulder.co.us/news/press%5Freleases/2003/112603elect.htm

Members of the group addressed the Boulder County Commissioners on Thursday December 4 and delivered the Declaration for Quality Elections. See Presentations for more details.

On December 12, 2003, the Boulder County Clerk's office announced that they will propose to the County Commissioners that the 2004 election use voter-verifiable paper ballots, in the form of a centralized optical scan system.

In January 2004, the Boulder County Clerk announced that she will recommend that the County purchase an optical-scan paper ballot system from Hart InterCivic. We sent Letter12Jan to the commissioners detailing our concerns about her recommendation.

After several citizen requests for information about the system being recommended, the county announced that the hearing would be postponed until January 29th, when more time could be allocated for the meeting, and that portions of the Hart Intercivic proposal would be released onto the County Clerk's website for public review. Portions of the proposal were released during the evening of January 16th, and by January 21st the entire Hart Intercivic proposal had been released, with the exception of Section 6, which detailed pricing information. The released material can currently be found at http://www.co.boulder.co.us/clerk/HartInfo/, and a table of contents is provided here.

On January 29, 2004, the Boulder County Commissioners held a public hearing on the County Clerk's recommendation. Copies of the handouts from this meeting can be found here, and video streams of the meeting are available here.

In April, the commissioners chose to authorize the purchase, under this contract. The first payment to Hart has been made, and the Boulder County elections staff have been training on Hart's gear.

The August 2004 primary election marked the debut of Boulder County's new system. Al Kolwicz, the Republican designate to the canvass board, has posted his experiences on his blog.