Paper or personnel problems?
By RICHARD VALENTY Colorado Daily    14 March 2005

The 2004 election counting process in Boulder County slowed to a grinding halt shortly after the polls closed Nov. 2. Bewildered election officials searched for reasons why.

Ultimately, officials discovered the Hart InterCivic "Ballot Now" voting system could not instantly process portions of some 13,000 ballots printed by printing company EagleDirect because option boxes on the paper ballots were not located where the system expected to electronically read the information. Workers were required to visually resolve each "damaged race," and full precinct results were not released until Nov. 5.

The City of Boulder held an election March 8 using the same system. This time, Hart itself printed the ballots, and the entire election was processed by 9:15 Tuesday evening, with no damaged races found on the paper ballots.

End of story.

Well, not quite.
 

Howard Harris, president of EagleDirect, visited Friday's meeting of the Boulder County Election Review Committee (ERC), a group charged with studying 2004 election problems.

"It's easy to blame the printer," said Harris. "The continual characterization that this was a huge problem is something I take personally."

Hart had suggested in prior ERC meetings that the paper stock used for 2004 ballots could have had excessive moisture content or could have been printed on at improper temperatures, possibly causing "nonlinear" paper warping. Harris said he believes Eagle followed proper paper conditioning practices throughout the process.

To create a paper ballot, the Hart system creates digital PostScript files determining ballot text, box placement and serial numbers. Harris suggested the actual PostScript files might have led to improper box location.

Harris said he recently sent "stripped-down" versions of the PostScript files to a Kodak laboratory, and said the lab informed him a "preliminary analysis" suggested anomalies in the files.

"I expect to hear more from the investigation in a week or two," said Harris Friday.

Certain 2004 ballots had to be duplicated because the Hart system could not read blurred bar codes on the ballots and for other various reasons. ERC members suggested county officials should provide Harris with serial numbers of unreadable ballots so he could check for correlations between ballot problems and digital files or machinery.

"If you don't have traceability, you can't solve the problem," said ERC member Michael Taylor.

Still, ballot-processing problems were not the only reasons why the 2004 election took so long to tabulate. The county faced massive numbers of new voter registrations and high voter turnout in a presidential election year, along with problems attracting and training temps or volunteers to process the mountains of paperwork.

Boulder County Clerk Linda Salas began the meeting by comparing county paid staffing levels unfavorably with other neighboring counties (SEE BOX). Also, Shannon Robinson, chairperson of the Boulder County Republican Electoral Reform Committee, presented excerpts from a 93-page report about statewide and local 2004 election problems.

Robinson said Boulder's process was impacted by confusion, especially among young voters, about proper voter-registration practices. She said a large number of registration forms were delivered to the county clerk from voters not living in Boulder County, and many CU students from out of state did not understand residency or change-of-address requirements.

"There needs to be some real regulation on voter registration drives," said Robinson.

Also, many voters used provisional ballots in 2004 because their names could not be found in poll books listing registered voters at a given precinct. Robinson said some voters actually believed the existence of provisional ballots meant they could vote at the wrong precinct for convenience, when in fact only their vote in the presidential race would count - and only if officials could verify actual registration after the polls closed.

"People lost sight of the fundamentals, even of registering to vote," said Robinson.

Robinson said officials in Boulder and other counties spent massive amounts of time verifying registrations of those casting provisional ballots in 2004. She said absentee ballots also took a great deal of time to process, and some absentee voters were uncertain if their ballots were received so they went to polling places as well - creating additional problems for precinct election judges.

Robinson said Boulder County might reduce the need for personnel by using regional "vote centers" in the next general election. For example, Larimer County used less than 40 vote centers in 2004, while Boulder County used roughly 230 precincts.

Also, Robinson said the Boulder County early voting system was less than optimal due to limited locations, long lines and the fact that ballots were printed on demand instead of pre-printed. Local officials had the March 8 city election almost completely processed before the polls closed, demonstrating the value of early voting in creating timely results.

"We need to have an absolutely wonderful early voting system," said Robinson.

The county ERC will release its own report after a last meeting in April, although ERC chair Richard Lyons joked that the committee might simply rip the cover page from Robinson's report and replace it with an ERC title.

Still, Robinson said she believes additional careful or even painful examination of all details will be worth it to preserve a trustworthy democratic process.

"Let's look at everything under a microscope now," said Robinson. "I think it behooves us to do something about it now."