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Me be an election judge?

Contributed by: Eva Kosinski on 2/2/2008

Of late, there's been a lot of discussion about the degree to which elections are truthful. We ask if recounts will actually show the same numbers as the first count. We wonder why some folks think a recount is having the electronic machine run the count again, rather than double-check with real hand-counting. We have our doubts that election software (especially the proprietary kind that vendors won't let anyone see) is either already compromised, or "hackable" in ways that let specific candidates get more than their fair share of the vote count. We worry about the connections between political parties and specific machine manufacturers, and whether they might have a secondary agenda.

What we don't do, and should do, is take all that uncertainty out of our lives , suspend our unwillingness to be inconvenienced for one day, mark the calendar as VACATION DAY, and get our butts out there and be election judges.

If you care about fair and accurate voting, be the "boots on the ground" to watch who does what, and you will KNOW that the precinct you are in is protected from fraud. If every precinct has even one person who would do that, all of us could rest easier.

Think about it. Every election, the County Clerk's office has to run around like chickens trying to find someone with an interest in elections, while all the time we're out there, telling all of our friends that we think something is rotten in Denmark, but it doesn't occur to us that *we* could directly do something about it, other than writing to our Congressperson and asking there be some legislation to fix it.

No legislation is going to get us the election judges we need. We can hope that sometime the old-school (and long gone in most, if not all, states now) custom of giving people Election Day off as a paid holiday, will be re-established or mandated, but for those who believe the legislators all belong to some interest or another, are you really willing to wait until that happens? If you're an employer, you could give one employee the day off in an election year to be an election judge, if you were really community-minded.

If we get enough election judges we could hand-count everything in each precinct and post the results (as did our forefathers) for everyone to see at the polling place, to act as a double-check to whatever counting system the Clerk has. If we get enough election judges, who are required to be of different parties, so they can keep an eye on each other, and no collusion can happen, we could have an honest-to-God-fully-vetted-reproducible-results election right here in Boulder County in 2008.

Maybe we could be an example for the other communities, still sitting on their laurels, waiting for someone else to fix the voting problems.

Yes, you have to go to a training session (some folks go to two if they've never done it before, or make contact with someone who's already done it to ask questions). Yes, you have to be focused for the whole time when the election is on. Yes, you have to bring your own snacks and maybe something to read if it gets slow (no talking politics), and you will spend a very long day, and sometimes it will be frustrating, and sometimes it will be busy. But you will go home knowing you personally had done whatever you could to ensure an election faithful to the wishes of the voters of Boulder County.

Right now, Boulder County is in the cross hairs of a self-created problem (buying some voting equipment on the assurances of a manufacturer whose machines have now been de-certified by the Secretary of State as not quite trustworthy), which is being fixed by a combination of a new Clerk and a very vocal and committed set of activists who want to ensure verifiable elections, along with the County Commissioners, who I suspect, have learned a valuable, if expensive, lesson in not trusting vendors.

Statewide, a lot of poor choices have been made, and many communities are scrambling to figure out how to get the election done without equipment that turns out to have been "not as represented"; in many places these same vendors have been paid again and again to "fix" voting machine problems that are discovered (which leaves some doubt as to why they would be motivated to ever do it right). A statewide answer is not yet here, so we cannot fix everything by local action. Moves are afoot to make voting the same everywhere, but those working in the area ask "what if the Federal Government believes these vendors and mandate we ALL use their machines?" There's a lot to sort out, and we can't sit back and hope it will all turn out fine.

But we can do what we can do HERE. We have kept paper ballots when other counties have opted for machines without paper trails; we've been less clueless than most, so we can get something in place even if the machines are de-certified. Procedures can be put in place to provide checks and balances to concerns about optical readers and their difficulty grokking stray marks that occur on ballots, or to keep overly-aggressive folks from putting stuff on ballots that might damage the counting machines.

Back in the old days the quote was "if you're not part of the solution, you are part of the problem" and it couldn't be truer of elections. The Elections folks at the Clerks office work so hard trying to make up for folks who year after year blow off being judges, and have to offer last minute trainings, taking up precious time, at the last minute for those finally flushed out to help. The workload at election time is horrendous, and it's complex enough that you just can't bring anyone in off the street to do it.

Precincts have to be lumped together by the Clerk's office, because nobody wants to offer space at their organization or building for use as an election polling place. The judges for those precincts have to do much more work than they should have to, just because we are all bailing on our civic responsibilities. We talk about community, but elections are at the core of community, and we don't participate.

We tell everyone how proud we are to be in a country with free elections. Around the world folks risk their very lives to show up at polling places and vote, but we aren't willing to be even remotely inconvenienced for the privilege and the right to vote.

The least we can do is use a vacation day to be an election judge, or give up a lunch appointment to go to an elections training, or ask the folks at our business or church if they would be willing to offer space for polling for one single day out of the year. If they don't trust strangers in their building, offer be there and keep an eye out, so the election judges can have more precinct polling places and a smaller workload. Babysit for a friend so they can be an election judge. Do what you can. It's the least we can do to be sure our elections are safe.

Call the Clerk's office at 303-413-7740 or visit the website at http://www.co.boulder.co.us/clerk/elections/
and "give a day for democracy" by being an elections judge.

You know how you hate those folks who only "talk the talk" and won't "walk the walk." Be an example to the kids out there. Let's show everyone that Boulder County cares more about fair and honest elections than just talking about how *everyone else* should fix it.


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CONTRIBUTOR INFORMATION

Eva Kosinski

Louisville , CO

Eva Kosinski has posted 110 stories and 12 comments since joining on 12/18/2005. Eva Kosinski 's average story rating is 4.92.
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