Publish Date: 2/18/2005

Voters, poll watchers at hearing blast county voting system

By Brad Turner The Daily Times-Call

BOULDER — Irate voters and election judges vented for two hours Thursday night at a public hearing hosted by the county’s Election Review Committee.

The nine-member ERC has been meeting weekly to investigate why it took Boulder County elections staff more than three days to tally votes Nov. 2. At previous meetings, officials blamed sloppily printed ballots and a lack of volunteers.

Most speakers at Thursday’s meeting blamed the voting system itself, calling it poorly designed and unreliable.

Lynn Segal burst into tears as she told the panel she did not trust electronic voting systems like Boulder County’s $1.3 million ballot-counting software created by Hart InterCivic.

“I won’t vote until we have a hand count,” she said. “I’m not putting my ballot in a black box.”

Segal turned to the crowd at the Boulder County Courthouse and tore up her ballot for the upcoming Boulder city election to punctuate her comments. Later, she passed out a flier titled “Don’t Let the Computer Eat Your Vote.”

In a witty speech, Al Bartlett said he longed for the computer punch cards the county used for decades, and had little faith in the “large, flimsy paper sheets” used as ballots by the Hart system.

“Forget about the infatuation with high-tech, and let’s go back to something that we know works,” Bartlett said.

Election judge Peter Richards said the polling location he supervised at a Boulder elementary school was a “madhouse,” with 150 people lined up outside when the polls opened at 7 a.m. Election Day.

The packed polling place was particularly hectic because a large number of first-time voters required provisional ballots. Under federal law, a voter whose registration is in question may fill out a provisional ballot that will be reviewed by election officials before it is allowed to be counted.

Richards said Hart’s provisional ballots were ridiculous because they were identical to standard ballots and therefore difficult to filter out of the main ballot boxes.

“It’s a dumb system, you got to admit,” he told the panel. “I personally screwed up a number of provisional ballots.”

But several speakers, including election judge Chris Lucas, said voters should share some responsibility for the polling debacle.

“The voters failed to follow directions many times,” Lucas said.

Many voters “got cute” by putting humorous comments in the blanks reserved for write-in candidates. Others put squiggles on their ballots that needed to be verified during the tally, she said.

A second public hearing is scheduled for March 3 at the Longmont Senior Citizens Center.

The committee will continue to meet weekly and hopes to have a final report, including suggestions for improvements, by April 15.