Maybe Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper ought to ask the neighbors for advice.
The breakdown of Denver’s voting and ballot-counting system last week was the big story of the election, and in the aftermath Hickenlooper declared “enough is enough,” demanding quick answers and solutions.
As usual, the mayor will appoint a business-dominated task force to address the issue.
Another task force is a bad idea. Ask Councilwoman Marcia Johnson. She and the council appointed a task force last summer. Few of its recommendations were followed, and problems at the Denver Election Commission clearly weren’t solved.
Instead, the mayor should drive west on Sixth Avenue and meet with Jefferson County officials. He might learn how the state’s second-largest county managed to report 81 percent of its election returns Tuesday night while Denver was reporting 2 percent.
Both counties had to meet the same federal mandates for disabled access. Both used electronic voting machines. Both experienced big turnout.
The answer is Jefferson County did not use vote centers. Instead, it stuck with neighborhood and local voting centers with old-fashioned poll books instead of electronic voter rolls.
The Denver Election Commission did not want to spend the money to equip each of the city’s 210 neighborhood centers with fully accessible electronic machines, instead opting to set up 55 vote centers that depended on accessing Denver’s voter-registration database each time a voter checked in. The problem wasn’t a lack of laptops at polling places. The problem was the capacity of the server.
The move to vote centers had other serious consequences. The decision required technological adaptations that Denver was unprepared to handle. This was evident in the August primary, despite the light turnout. Though vote centers seemed cheaper and easier, the system for verifying voter identity was untested and poorly managed.
Though the mayor responded to the August warning signs by allocating an additional $800,000 to the commission, he failed earlier to heed the warnings and suggestions of others.
Following the 2004 election, Councilwoman and former Denver Clerk and Recorder Rosemary Rodriguez warned Hickenlooper that the system was flawed. Long lines and delayed results plagued the city during that election.
Rodriguez suggested:
- Improve accountability and elect the county clerk. The current clerk and recorder is a mayoral appointment. The other two election commissioners are elected.
- Professionalize the clerk’s office and hire employees through the city’s personnel system. Commission employees are political appointees. There is neither criteria for experience or education nor a professional selection process. Commission employees have no direct accountability and are headed by a political appointee and overseen by two elected commissioners who oversee policy – not operations.
The mayor’s office rejected both suggestions, pointing out that an elected clerk would be one more politician with possible mayoral ambitions, expressing concern about an elected clerk’s ability to work efficiently with title companies on real estate transfers and refusing to upset the status quo by professionalizing the staff.
Despite recommendations from Johnson’s task force, the City Council decided against a measure to professionalize the workforce, sharing the mayor’s concern about demoralizing employees.
All that’s in the past. Now, the mayor and council should:
- Bring in an outside auditor with information technology expertise to thoroughly examine what went wrong and why.
- Petition the legislature to change the law and allow Denver to use all-mail ballots for partisan elections. Set up fully accessible early-voting centers for those who cannot or prefer not to vote by mail.
- Professionalize the commission’s workforce and take another look at the pros and cons of an elected city clerk.
As the mayor says, enough is enough.
Susan Barnes-Gelt is a former Denver City Council member and mayoral aide.
