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OpEdNews Op Eds    H4'ed 4/15/11

Colo. Election Clerks at War with the Public

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Scott Doyle, clerk and recorder in Larimer County and president of the Colorado County Clerks Association, implies that public ballot inspections will violate voter privacy:

* * * * quote * * * *
"Ballots are votes, and Colorado has decades of precedent to ensure votes are counted correctly and voters' privacy is secure," he writes, in opposition to allowing public inspection of the ballots.
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More:
http://www.denverpost.com/opinion/ci_17694150

As an election official, Doyle knows that the Colorado Constitution requires ballots to be anonymous. Public examinations of anonymous ballots does nothing whatever to violate voter privacy.

UNIQUE BAR CODES ON MAIL-IN BALLOTS DO COMPROMISE PRIVACY TO INSIDERS (BUT DO NOT AFFECT PRIVACY WITH PUBLIC INSPECTIONS)

Perhaps Colorado clerks and one of their favored vendors, Hart Intercivic, know that if the public examines the Hart ballots we'll see that Hart's mail-ballot system is violating voter privacy.

Citizens who have received Hart ballots in the mail have shown that Hart is placing unique bar codes on each voter's ballot. This compromises voter privacy for mail-in ballots, enabling insiders to build databases that show the ballot choices for each mail-in voter. Perhaps THAT is why the Colorado Clerks are so skittish about letting the public see the ballots.

Public ballot inspections can't reveal to the public how people voted, even if there are unique bar codes on the ballots. Insiders will be able to see, but not the public. It is just as unconstitutional for insiders to violate voter privacy, however.

What public ballot inspections will do in Colorado is this: They will expose to Coloradoans that insiders can harvest your political privacy.

NOT ALL BALLOT BAR CODES ARE BAD

Unique bar codes probably won't violate privacy for ballots cast at polling places. They absolutely compromise privacy with mail-in ballots, which Colorado uses heavily.

Not all ballot bar codes are unique, and only a unique identifier can be tied back to the voter. Some bar codes just indicate precinct, and those do not violate your privacy at all.

Hart ballots do use unique identifiers. We know this because two people living in the same household, in counties that use Hart Intercivic, get absentee ballots with different and unique bar codes.

"THE DARK AGES OF ACCOUNTABILITY"

Regarding the clerks' unease about letting the public see ballots, Denver Post columnist Vince Carroll writes:

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"Here's my guess: Gessler intends to let the public witness the recount, and most clerks recoil at the idea of letting the public anywhere near ballots, even after formal requests under the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA).

"If ballots aren't open records, however, then this state is in the Dark Ages of accountability.

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Bev Harris is executive director of Black Box Voting, Inc. an advocacy group committed to restoring citizen oversight to elections.
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