There is an inescapable irony about the slew of problems the Denver Election Commission is having with this month’s election.
It was supposed to be the first step in restoring public confidence in the city’s troubled voting system. The city council has proposed replacing the commission with an elected clerk and recorder.
Instead, the election has become another laughingstock of democracy. The matter was hurried to the ballot, which features a confusing layout and a tight deadline. It’s an all-mail ballot, and now we learn that thousands of ballots were mailed to the wrong addresses. Even Mayor John Hickenlooper’s ballot was mailed to the wrong address.
Now, voters are left to watch the spectacle as officials from the Election Commission, the U.S. Postal Service and Sequoia Voting Systems point fingers and accuse one another of incompetence.
It’s a grotesque scenario, but one that was widely predicted. Hickenlooper and Denver City Council President Michael Hancock warned against rushing to a January mail vote. Scott Doyle, the Larimer County clerk who was on the city’s election review panel, said the election commission had leadership and technical problems and was unprepared. And we editorialized several times against rushing to schedule a special election when a regular municipal election will take place in May.
But the City Council forged ahead, spending $600,000 on a special election.
We urge Denverites to vote “no” on the mail-ballot question. Though we support a change in the governing structure, we believe the public needs time to study the issue, and it should be settled in a proper election. That’s a far sight from what has been unfolding over the last week. According to election commission spokesman Alton Dillard, the ballot delivery problems stem from a rushed timeframe that didn’t allow for routine updating of voter databases.
Nine councilmembers voted in favor of the January mail ballot and they ought to take responsibility for the fiasco. They are: Carol Boigon, Charlie Brown, Rick Garcia, Marcia Johnson, Peggy Lehmann, Kathleen MacKenzie, Judy Montero, Jeanne Robb and Rosemary Rodriguez. They owe voters an explanation and an apology.
The November elections were an embarrassing debacle for a modern city. The hours-long lines, malfunctioning electronic poll books and lame excuses from election officials left many Denverites disgusted.
To make a bad situation worse by scheduling an expensive snap election that the beleaguered commission is ill-equipped to handle is a travesty.
