ELECTION 2006 Voting Snafus Lead to Investigation Of Montrose County Election
 

By Christopher Pike

In the wake of complaints from Montrose citizens and county officials about breakdowns in security and of voting machines as well as long delays at the polls in last week’s election, the Montrose Board of County Commissioners has called for an investigation, County Commissioner Bill Patterson said Tuesday. “We just want to get to the bottom of it. At some voting centers, there were complete disasters. Machines were not working and secrecy was in question,” he said.

“Obviously, an investigation is needed into what happened at the [Montrose] Pavilion,” said Deborah Rudy, an assistant to the county clerk and election official at the Montrose County clerk’s office. At the Pavilion, 11 of the 12 Direct Recording Electronic Voting Machines, or DREs, ceased operation, requiring voters to resort to the use of paper ballots, of which there were not enough in stock. In some instances, the ballot shortage forced precinct volunteers to issue photocopied sample ballots with text on only one side (a number of which were rejected by optical scanning equipment).

“I found it odd that Montrose didn’t discuss security measures from the 16-page directive that came from Denver,” said Regina Sowell, who was defeated by Fran Long 6,638 to 4,285 for the Montrose County Clerk and Recorder position. “And there were no paper ballots or backup when I voted at the Pavilion,” she added.

That directive was the result of court-ordered emergency security procedures issued September 22 in response to a suit filed by Voter Action last summer in Denver calling for enhanced security procedures to be followed in voting, vote storage and related security and the processing of ballot information with DREs by county officials. In his ruling, Judge Lawrence Manzanares said the Secretary of State’s office failed to develop minimum security standards required by state law, and did an “abysmal” job of documenting of the testing during its certification process; he went on to order the Secretary of State to adopt statewide security standards before the November 2006 election, and to further ensure compliance by all Colorado counties using the DREs.

According to Rudy, it was the “inexperience and poor training” of the staff and volunteers confronted with new tasks that resulted in problems.

“Really, everyone wants to blame it on equipment, but I don’t think it was that,” said Rudy, adding that although “our training was very limited. I received the best I could.”

Furthermore, Rudy said, the Secretary of State signed off on all of the DRE machines used in the state, and “we couldn’t see any point in going to our interim step.

“We had to duplicate by scanning,” she said. “This was really a difficult election for everyone. People really need to take that into consideration.” Rudy went on to place some blame on the shoulders of the commissioners themselves, suggesting that, in the future, “the BOCC provide more staff.”

Patterson reported that when the sample ballots were found to be incompatible with the scanners, the votes had to be entered manually by volunteers, creating two potential “sources of error.” Because “there was a shortage” of ballots, he explained, “they had to copy from them side by side on an open table,” causing “a lot of uneasiness.” The problem was then compounded, Patterson suggested, by “poor technical support” from the state. For instance, 113 different styles of ballots had to be printed, Rudy observed. “For provisional ballots, some precincts would vote for city and some for county measures and candidates. And some wouldn’t.

“Others were in a fire district,” said Rudy.

Of Montrose County’s seven voting centers, averaging four precincts per center, the center at the Pavilion was the most problematic. The other centers were located at City Hall, Friendship Hall, West End, Olathe, DMEA, and Valley Baptist Church.

When there was a breakdown, the judges had to go directly to d poll books containing the names, addresses and precincts of the voters. Rudy noted that when the equipment failed at the Pavilion and only one booth was working, election officials had to reset and back up information there – “but there were only two memory cards for that set of equipment. I don’t know why. Possibly inexperience,” she suggested.

Sowell, who paid close attention to the election process during her candidacy in part due to the electronic equipment issues, told The Watch that because Montrose County officials, who were “very confident” in the DREs and elected not to utilize the alternative of paper ballots with optical scanner as recommended by a nonpartisan panel, there was an insufficient backup plan. “I didn’t know it would be so bad so quickly. I think the machines are more complicated than they appear,” said Sowell.

The nonpartisan panel was made up of one Democrat, one Republican, one independent or unaffiliated, one Libertarian and one representative from the League of Women Voters, and at least one representative from the county clerk’s office. “I realize it sounds like sour grapes, but my aim was still the same win or lose,” said Sowell. “No electronic equipment – that was a big motivation for me to run for this office. The private entities with ties to the Republican party who provided these machines should give us a refund on the equipment and start over.”

Patterson cautioned, however, that while there will be an investigation, there will not be a “witch hunt. We just want to learn from the mistakes made and determine how to improve in the future."