“Fool me once, shame on – shame on you. Fool me – you can’t get fooled again.” – George W. Bush, Sept. 17, 2002.
Picture this: It’s Nov. 14, 2008, 10 days after the presidential election, and the fools at the Denver Election Commission are still apologizing.
“We want to thank all the people who have brought food and water to voters still in line,” says the successor to Commissioner Sandy Adams. “We hope to have all the votes cast by tomorrow. Results should be tallied by Christmas, except for the ballots cast by people who committed felonies after they went berserk when the third snowstorm hit while they were still in line. A court ruling on their eligibility to vote is pending.”
Yes, it really can get worse. And if there’s any hope for the 2008 election, City Councilwoman and former Denver Election Commissioner Rosemary Rodriguez thinks the mess created by vote centers must be fixed now.
“We have a very limited amount of time to get it right,” she said.
Though Rodriguez thinks more talk is unnecessary, she has agreed to serve on Mayor John Hickenlooper’s panel to investigate what went wrong in the election that even had Gov.-elect Bill Ritter burning daylight for an hour and 40 minutes waiting in line to cast his ballot.
“We already have the information we need to take action,” she said.
We had it before Nov. 7.
Rodriguez, who was appointed to the Election Commission by Mayor Wellington Webb in 1997 and served for five years, said anybody with even passing familiarity with the vote-center system knew trouble was ahead.
Heavy voter turnout was anticipated; a vast majority of registered voters were unfamiliar with the vote centers; most election judges were using the electronic system for the first time; and the ballot was ridiculously long.
“But the biggest mistake was relying on the electronic poll book,” Rodriguez said. “They had problems with that system in August and should have printed paper poll books for the general election.”
As the computerized system for verifying voter registration crashed repeatedly, lines at the polls got longer, and untold thousands of voters simply left.
“I appreciate that many people were inconvenienced when they had to wait in long lines to vote,” Rodriguez said. “But the real problem is the people who couldn’t wait in line who were disenfranchised. That can’t happen again.”
Rodriguez has been pushing for years for a city charter change to replace the Election Commission with a single elected city clerk and recorder. “It would put one person very clearly in your sights who is responsible for the system. It would put an end to the battles.”
After the fiasco last Tuesday, that’s pretty much a done deal.
But in the meantime, Rodriguez wants immediate action to repair the election system. And for starters, she wants the vote-center concept scrapped.
“Voting technology and processes should never be cutting edge,” she said, “they should be proven.”
The precinct system with the printed poll books may be creaky, but it worked. And it still can despite changes in federal laws that require all polling places to be accessible to the disabled.
The city can rent temporary wheelchair ramps and buy the additional specialized voting machines for all 292 neighborhood polling places. That’s what Jefferson and Arapahoe counties did. “They had a plan,” Rodriguez said.
While exasperated voters may delight in blaming the mayor for the debacle at the polls, Rodriguez said such criticism is misplaced. “The people in charge are on the three-member Election Commission. They must be held accountable.”
For sure. The City Council should put Rodriguez’s proposed charter change before the voters now while their frustration is still raw. But, please, make it a mail-only election.
As my late grandmother, Ethel Gunkel, said, “There are fools and then there are damned fools.”
Most voters know the difference.
Diane Carman’s column appears Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday. She can be reached at 303-954-1489 or dcarman@denverpost.com
