[EL] ELB News and Commentary 10/1/11

[Bev Harris]

Hi Rick,

You wrote, regarding the appeals court decision to affirm that ballots are part
of Colorado Open Records Act, "The ruling could have a major impact on Colorado
election law, though today’s decision likely is not the end of the fight.”

I'm not sure how it would "have a major impact on Colorado election law" since
nothing in the law is changed at all. Actually it is already the law that
ballots are part of public records law; it has been the law for a hundred
years, and the intent to keep ballots in the open records law was explicitly
confirmed in a legislative session in the past few years. Ballots have never
NOT been included in CORA.

The only reason it went to court is that the Aspen Mayor refused to allow a
candidate to look at ballot images (even though the same ballot images had
already been shown on TV). In addition, a second and not connected case in
Saguache County also resulted in a court decision that citizens can examine the
ballots, and El Paso County has already allowed such examinations without a
fight, as has the whole state of Florida (remember the Associated Press looking
at 2000 presidential ballots?); also the state of Michigan, which allows
citizens to inspect and videotape ballots, and the state of Ohio, where
citizens examined all ballots from the 2004 presidential election.

New Hampshire did a very weird and underhanded maneuver in 2003 to exclude
ballots from its right to know; when Black Box Voting exposed that, legislator
Seth Cohn is now introducing legislation to reinstate ballots in right to know
law.

When you write "though today’s decision likely is not the end of the fight” it
is probably true, but only because the secretive Colorado Clerks Association,
which is paid for with public funds but considers itself exempt from open
records laws, is fighting it. There really is only one reason to prevent the
public from examining its own election records: to protect corruption.

I hope the important obstruction attempts over public rights to validate their
own elections continues to be discussed on the Election Law list. It would seem
that this issue is pretty darn important.

Bev Harris
Founder - Black Box Voting
http://www.blackboxvoting.org

* * * * *

Government is the servant of the people, and not the master of them. The
people, in delegating authority, do not give their public servants the right
to decide what is good for the people to know and what is not good for them to
know. We insist on remaining informed so that we may retain control over the
instruments of government we have created.

Black Box Voting is a nonpartisan, nonprofit 501c(3) elections watchdog group
funded entirely by citizen donations.
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html
Black Box Voting
330 SW 43rd St Suite K
PMB 547
Renton WA 98057


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