Election report on horizon
By RICHARD VALENTY Colorado Daily Staff Writer  21 March 2005

It's a high-tech world. Boulder County owns a high-tech voting system. However, a handful of high-tech local citizens believe the county should consider stepping back in time before tabulating the next election.

Neal McBurnett, a former software engineer for Bell Labs, spoke Friday before the Boulder County Election Review Committee (ERC) not to bury digital systems, but to explain how to double-check digital results using people, pens and paper.

City and county election officials held a hand audit of the March 8 City of Boulder election last Monday, largely due to McBurnett's urging. Three teams of two temporary workers hand-counted about 600 ballots, and while the hand count matched the machine count perfectly, McBurnett said an audit should still be part of future elections since machines or machine operators are fallible.

"Why can't we just do something your grandmother can really trust?" asked McBurnett.

Boulder's Evan Ravitz worked as a programmer for Xerox in the 1970s. Ravitz asked the ERC Friday to consider recommending 100-percent hand counting in the next election in part to eliminate any doubt of digital mistakes - especially since digital mistakes are not always apparent to human observers.
 

Ralph Shnelvar, a Boulder software programmer, said he heard Ravitz call for hand-counting many months ago and recalled his immediate response.

"At that time, I thought Evan Ravitz was an idiot and a flake," said Shnelvar.

Shnelvar said he has since changed his tune about both Ravitz and hand-counting, calling the practice cheaper and faster than the arduous process Boulder County went through in 2004.

The ERC has met almost weekly since January and is about to begin work on a report documenting problems with the 2004 election and offering suggestions for a more efficient next election. Still, ERC members were uncertain Friday if their charge included suggesting replacing the county's Hart InterCivic "Ballot Now" system with hand-counting or another digital system.

ERC chair Richard Lyons has worked as an observer in three international elections held using paper ballots, and said history tells him there are many ways to botch an election, whether with mistakes or by outright fraud.

"I hope these activists don't lose sight of the fact that registration and certification can be more important than counting," said Lyons.

Alisa Lewis, Boulder's City Clerk, held the March 8 election using the Hart system, and said the election was one of the "easiest" elections she has held in roughly 20 years as an election official.

Lewis said she has held hand-counted elections in the past and doesn't necessarily find them faster than those using digital equipment. She recalled one election where election workers became fatigued and couldn't deliver instant results.

"It took until 2 a.m. to count one council race with four candidates," said Lewis.