| Representatives from organizations that included Coloradoans for Voting Integrity, Common Cause, the Public Integrity Project, and the Colorado Voter Group, joined the dissenting voices from the county clerks in opposition to the mail-only plan, but they were less united on the alternative.
The majority advocated for paper ballots counted in the polling places, but others, such as Kirsten Thompson of People for the American Way wanted a more diverse array of options. Thompson applauded the inclusion of mail ballots and even spoke for a path to recertification for the machines.
Denver Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O'Malley was among the clerks taking a stand against her peers. Denver voters seem more reluctant to use mail ballots than the Colorado average, with more than eighty percent of them choosing to vote on election day.
Bailey asserted that a move to mail only balloting would impact communities of color disproportionately, as it would also effect communities that needed more than average outreach and education to bring into the process. Conejos County Clerk Lawrence Gallegos added that rural voters in his county preferred the community experience of coming together in their precincts, and cautioned to not just, "put a band-aid on the problem," with a short term fix.
On what is perhaps the other side of the spectrum, the plan was opposed by Peter Lichtenheld, a representative from voting system provider Hart Intercivic. He promised that their systems were affordable solutions that were accurate and secure, and threatened that a shifting regulatory and testing environment would require new costly audits that his company wanted passed along to the taxpayers and not borne by their profits. It was a fairly bold statement from an industry that is still broadly non-compliant with rules established in 2002. Mr. Lichtenheld, said their machines were fully reliable and proudly boasted that, "System 6.0 works!" This prompted the audible aside from Senator Gordon, "What about 5.0?"
Lichtenheld was not pressed for a response, but instead went on to ask a requirement be added to any future regulations that vendors, "must be given the threat environment ahead of time so that we can test our systems." This pointed to a problem raised repeatedly by several professional sytems engineers, that no amount of testing, even in a well funded and trusted environment can ever suffice. You can only test for the problems you can think of in a given time period, and half an hour after the test those vulnerabilities may be obsolete. Making it clear that this distrust of the machines was not based on a fear of modernity, Ivan Meek testified that when he eats pumpkin pie he uses a fork not an electric toothbrush. It was a matter of using the technology appropriate to the job, and that a computer was not the appropriate technology to count a vote.
The industry representatives are asking Colorado to relax the rules and a recertify existing machines. This position is supported at least in part by Mesa County Elections Director Sheila Reiner and Jefferson County Democratic Party Secretary Vincent Todd. Reiner was upset that the tests were done in isolation of consideration of the policies and practices of the counties. She granted that unattended machines were insecure but that we should trust the county clerks to defend the machine's safety. Hold on, I have to go editorialize about that... ...ok, I am back.
Secretary Todd made no such sweeping claim on security, but his statement included a criticism about the testing procedures, specifically regarding the ES&S 650, a machine that his county has apparently used with a good deal of success. Todd said the system should be measured by the accuracy as commonly used by trained operators and not the "theoretical accuracy with untrained users."
These views were outnumbered by the testimony of many others who submitted a great deal of evidence that the machines were unsafe regardless of policies of operation. And yet, motion towards the outright rejection of machines met some opposition by advocates of multi-modal approaches who feel the already purchased machines are needed to provide choices in an underfunded and understaffed system.
Over the course of the public comments, it was clear that the dangers and shortfalls of both electronic voting and mail ballot elections are well known and that the 'unforeseen problems' counties will be reporting throughout 2008 are in fact fully expected. Systemic neglect of those warnings in the past have led us to where legislative solutions may be hasty and unsatisfactory.
Senator Gordon confessed, "As a legislature, if we do our job properly, we will be distributing unhappiness in an equitable way." He stated that the clerks and their limited resources already have to support mail delivered systems for absentee voters. Funding limitations may force them to forgo polling places. He also indicated that any legislative solutions would require time, and with an August primary and immediate municipal elections in some counties, the clerks expressed a need for a very low cost short run solution to fill the gap. Gordon made it clear that leaving confused voters without polling places in November was in no way a final decision, and that he and many other legislators would confer in the coming session. Senator Gordon invited comments to be sent to Ken@KenGordon.com
Secretary Coffman said that he would be pursuing a two pronged approach, in which he would work with the Clerks, Assembly and the public on crafting the new legislation, and Colorado Deputy Secretary of State Bill Hobbs would lead the effort to establish public hearings and rules for possible recertification of the voting machines.
|
RSS Feed
