Printer says new ballots tested OK

Company says printing problems unique to county

By Kate Larsen and Ryan Morgan, Boulder Daily Camera Staff Writers
November 9, 2004

The head of the printing company that delivered thousands of ballots that were unreadable to Boulder County's voting machines said his company didn't find any problems when they tested the ballots before delivery.

"All of the ballots were tested, all of the ballots were scanned properly and looked at and deemed OK," Howard Harris, president of the Denver-based printing company Eagle Direct, said Monday. "That's what's got all of us scratching our heads."  
Vote-counting machines spit out thousands of ballots because they were printed with too much or too little ink, or because the ballot questions weren't exactly where the system's computer expected them to be on the ballot.

Election workers had to count those ballots ? very slowly ? by hand, one of the major factors in delaying election results for more than 72 hours after the polls closed.

The problems might have resulted from the fact that the printing company didn't realize how strictly the voting machines manufactured by Hart InterCivic scrutinized ballots, Harris said.

"I don't know what they could have done differently, except that the tolerances were different from what was delivered," he said. "If we knew what the tolerances were in advance, we could have put in additional control procedures."

A spokeswoman for Hart InterCivic has said that the kind of printing problems that tripped up this election were unique to Boulder County.

County spokesman Jim Burrus said county election officials did their pre-election tests using ballots printed in-house, not from Eagle Direct.

Boulder isn't the only county to use optical-scan ballots. Susan Miller, director of elections for Jefferson County, said her department hires an outside contractor to print ballots.

"We just do a lot of testing when we get them," she said. "We have a printer we've worked with for a long time, and they work with our election (machine) vendor, so they are aware of what the requirements are."

County Commissioner Paul Danish said it's up to Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Linda Salas how to assess the election.

"If this were my responsibility I'd have a group organized immediately and review the whole thing from start to finish," Danish said.

Such a group has yet to be organized but will likely come together soon, Burrus said.

But election officials and the Clerk and Recorder's Office are busy tallying damaged and provisional ballots, which require research to ensure their authors are registered and voted just once, before a deadline next week.

"They're up to their eyeballs in that," he said.

Danish said he wants all voters to know that their votes in Boulder County do count. Many residents have said that although they know their votes technically counted, they felt emotionally excluded when they watched initial returns pour in from several tight state and national races.

"The vote of every person in Boulder County counts just as much as the person whose vote was counted five minutes after the election ended," Danish said.