This news article was sent to me by Jim Dickson at AAPD. After reading it, I was so amazed that I called my dear friend Sheila back in Denver to see how she fared at the polls. She told me that she waited in line for over two hours to vote. I heard similar stories from others back home. At the center of all this is the so called “voting centers bill” that the Colorado legislature giddily voted in a few months after I left. This was something that I was vehemently against, and so were other folks whom I’d worked with, but the powers that wanted it sold the idea to state lawmakers, who lapped it up like kittens at a saucer of milk. Now, the state is all a-flutter about this fiasco, and heads may roll in Denver. Anyway, here’s the story:
Voting problems overwhelm city
“This is a nightmare”
By George Merritt and Katy Human
Denver Post Staff Writers
DenverPost.com
Article Last Updated:11/08/2006 08:54:10 AM MST
A broken ballot scanner will prevent Denver from counting all its absentee ballots for days, adding to a series of Election Day problems that erupted during the city’s first general election with vote centers.
Frustrated voters stood in lines as long as three hours at several of the more concentrated centers. By 10 p.m., long after media outlets had declared Bill Ritter the winner of the governor’s race, problems in Denver and Douglas counties left voters stuck in lines still waiting to cast their ballots.
About half of the 55 centers in Denver had long lines because of problems with the centralized registration system, which stalled under an overload during in the morning and then went off line in the middle of the day.
Some people simply left without voting. Others tried three centers or more in an effort to vote as they faced lines that wrapped around the block.
FairVote Colorado, a nonprofit election monitor, tallied long lines at 26 of the 55 voting centers during the day.
The Denver Election Commission ran out of provisional ballots at one vote center and began using sample ballots – printed as practice sheets for people waiting in line – as substitute provisional ballots.
Finally, one of the city’s two ballot- scanning machines broke, further delaying the count of absentee ballots.
“The count is going to take a few days,” Election Commission Executive Director John Gaydeski said. “That’s assuming we get the machine fixed.”
The botched election effort drew the attention of the Colorado Democratic Party, which filed a request for an injunction at midday asking a judge to keep polls open an extra two hours.
Denver District Court Judge Sheila Rappaport rejected the effort, saying she did not have the authority.
The case produced several accounts of voters leaving the polls without voting.
“The computers have been up and down all day,” said Denver Democratic Congresswoman Diana DeGette. “This is a nightmare throughout the city.”
Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper said he was “angry” as events unfolded.
“It’s one of the most frustrating days, if not the most frustrating, I’ve had since becoming mayor,” he said.
Hickenlooper said he would not rule out removing Clerk and Recorder Wayne Vaden, a Hickenlooper appointee to the Election Commission.
“I want a thorough explanation of why these things were not anticipated,” Hickenlooper said.
Tuesday’s problems came after a series of mistakes and missteps in Denver’s voting system, such as typos and a race being left off the absentee ballot.
A recent city auditor’s report cited the Election Commission for a lack of written procedures and planning.
Denver wasn’t the only county with problems.
In Jefferson County, which has the most registered voters in Colorado, 40 of the 1,880 electronic voting machines were not updated for this election, election director Susan Miller said
State House Republican Leader Mike May said Douglas County also had trouble getting some vote centers up and running.
“We’ll be talking about that during the legislative session,” he said. “People shouldn’t be disenfranchised.”
Denver’s woes went on all day long.
Voters faced long waits around the city, from Park Hill United Methodist Church to Denver Botanic Gardens to Highlands Senior Center.
The lines moved slowly all morning, but around noon the problem grew worse as the system for verifying voter registration went down at centers around the city.
As early as 7:30 a.m., election judges checking in voters on laptop computers began noticing problems that slowed the system.
Several judges at various sites said the problem was systemwide, although commission spokesman Alton Dillard said it was limited to a few sites.
At Denver Botanic Gardens, more than 200 voters backed up in a line that stretched out of the gates and down the block toward 11th Avenue.
“We will not get to vote today,” said a frustrated Lauren Brockman as he left without even getting through the garden’s gates. “Some people have to work.”
Joseph Rodello, who stood in line for three hours and 10 minutes at the Scheitler Recreation Center at Berkeley Park in Denver, said he has not missed voting since he turned 18.
“To leave or to give up, I just can’t do that,” the 39-year-old registered Democrat said. “To have the chance and the right, it’s just one of the things that is the cornerstone of our democracy.”
This was the first general election in which Denver used vote centers rather than traditional precincts, trimming the number of places available for voting from nearly 300 to 55. And the problems became apparent early in the day as lines stretched around blocks.
Denver election officials made an emergency call for volunteer election judges to help, while the Ritter campaign and nonpartisan groups tried to shuttle voters from crowded centers to less crowded centers, or entertain voters with long waits.
Dillard said up to 100 city employees and other Denver residents were sworn in as election judges and deployed at midmorning.
Unfortunately, none of it seemed to help. By nightfall, lines at vote centers around the city once again grew.
There was a line of 275 people at the Tattered Cover Book Store on 16th Street, and the wait was about three hours.
The setbacks throughout the day and the estimated 66 percent turnout – much more than expected – led to a shortage of provisional ballots, which are used when voters can’t register or provide identification.
So election officials at one center began using the yellow sample ballots they had printed for voters to practice on.
“It’s embarrassing,” said Election Commissioner Susan Rogers, who was ready to give up on vote centers.
“I would say we go to all mail ballots, but that’s a decision for the commission in the spring,” she said.
“The lack of oversight, from the mayor’s office on down, is just reprehensible,” said Steve Welchert, a Democratic political analyst. “We better change the voting style in this city, or change the City Council in May.”
In a statement issued Tuesday night, Hickenlooper thanked voters in lines for their patience and assured them that, even though the Denver Election Commission is an independent agency over which he has no authority, “the city will do everything in its power to ensure today’s unacceptable problems never happen again.”
Staff writers Karen E. Crummy, Jeffrey Leib and Kate Bernuth contributed to this report.
Staff writer George Merritt can be reached at 303-954-1657 or gmerritt@denverpost.com.
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VOTING PROBLEMS
Denver was among several counties in Colorado that had problems of some type Tuesday. Here are some others:
ARAPAHOE COUNTY
Some election judges had trouble getting electronic voting machines up and running, but even during the morning rush, lines were no longer than about 30 minutes, Clerk and Recorder Nancy Doty said.
Voters went to their own precincts, not vote centers, Doty said, and the contrast with neighboring Denver confused many voters.
DOUGLAS COUNTY
Voters were still waiting in line at 8 p.m. in many Douglas County polling places.
Mary Niblack, a spokeswoman for the elections office, said voters would be done at about 9:30, then the office would begin counting votes cast at 29 polling places Tuesday.
The ballot was the cause of the problem, she said, with many voters taking longer than 15 minutes to get through it.
Douglas County spokeswoman Wendy Holmes said lines at some of the county’s 29 vote centers were two to three hours long during the day, too. One location – the Grange in the Meadows – closed for one hour at midday to deal with technical problems, Holmes said.
JEFFERSON COUNTY
The county used precincts and paper poll books, avoiding two problems that appear to have contributed to Denver’s long lines.
However, 40 of Jefferson County’s 1,880 electronic voting machines – made by Election Systems and Software Inc. – were accidentally not updated for this election, said election director Susan Miller.
As a result, election judges trying to set up electronic voting booths at 6:30 a.m. couldn’t get some of the machines running.
MONTROSE
Three of Montrose’s eight precincts had Hart voting machines go down, and voters were given photocopied sample ballots or absentee ballots. Some of those ballots contained questions that city residents couldn’t vote on, but Montrose County Clerk Carol Kruse said city residents’ votes on those issues will not be counted.
Two of the troublesome precincts were back up in the early afternoon, but at the Montrose Pavilion, one of the town’s largest precincts, the machines were mostly down all day.
