Andrea Gyger
From:
Sent:
To:
Subject:

Hall, Hillary [hhall@bouldercounty.org]
Monday, August 03, 2009 3:51 PM
Andrea Gyger
Rule making August 3rd

Boulder County has just one comment on the proposed rules for today.

Comments on Rule Making:30.1.6 The ID requirements for a public institution of higher education exceed what is requiredfor other forms of ID by requiring the ID to include a birth date. DOB is used to determine
eligibility and would be included in the voter registration record and is therefore excessive in the
ID requirements. Would also strike the term student as faculty of the higher education also havethis type of ID.
Thank you,
Hillary Hall
Boulder County Clerk and Recorder1

THE VOTE BY MAIL PROJECT
625 NW EVERETT #229 PORTLAND, OR 97209
TEL. (503) 917-9066 – WWW.VOTEBYMAILPROJECT.ORG

The Honorable Bernie Buescher, Secretary of State
1700 Broadway, Suite 250
Denver, CO 80290
August 3, 2009
Dear Secretary Buescher,
The Vote By Mail Project (VBM Project) is thankful for the opportunity to submit the following
comments on the proposed amendments and revisions to the Colorado Secretary of State Election
Rules dated June 30, 2009. We also look forward to participating in the rulemaking hearingscheduled August 3, 2009 to provide additional comments on this matter.
The Vote By Mail Project (501c3) and the Vote By Mail Advocacy Project (501c4) provide an
institutional home for education and advocacy around the entire continuum of Vote By Mail
options. We believe that fair, efficient, and highly participatory elections make our democracystronger, and we are committed to assisting citizens and public officials nationwide to move theirstates along the continuum towards fair, efficient Vote By Mail elections. We assisted with thepassage of HB 09-1015, HB 09-1186, HB 09-1336, and HB 09-1337 in Colorado’s 2009
Legislative Session.
Our comments are listed below by rule number and our suggestions are italicized.

Rule 12.5
Changing the way mail-in voters are treated in an all-mail election will provide some consistency
and clarity to the process, for both the elector and the election administrator. However, voters
who are absent from the state in an all-mail election should still be afforded the extended
timelines for all-mail voters.
We recommend that the Rule 2.5.1 should reference that the mailing of the mail-in ballot must
follow the time-lines established in 1-8-111 or specifically state that the requested ballot must be
mailed within seventy-two hours after the receipt of the mail-in ballot application.
We also believe that voters be informed either annually, or before an election, which elections
they will be receiving a ballot and which they will not in order to provide some additional
information and consistency for voters as we increase the number of all-mail elections.

Rule 13.12
Being unable to locate 1-8-113(1)E C.R.S. it is difficult to adequately comment on this rulechange. However, we believe that a voter should not have to surrender their ballot in order tovote a regular ballot in an early vote location.

We suggest that the early vote ballot should be treated as a replacement ballot according to 1-8111(3) C.R.S. in this environment. This rule should also be clear in Rule 13.12.2 that voters havethe option to vote a provisional ballot in an early vote location according to 1-8.5-101 C.R.S.
without having to surrender their ballot or have it voided.

The Vote By Mail Project thanks the Secretary of State for this opportunity of comment. We
welcome any comments or thoughts you may have in our request.
Respectfully submitted this 3rd day of August, 2009.
______//signed//___________
Adam J. Smith, Executive Director
The Vote By Mail Project625 NW Everett #229
Portland, OR 97209(503) 917-9066
ajsmith@votebymailproject.org

Andrea Gyger
Subject:

FW: (On mail-in ballots, etc) Watch out for colorful characters & 5-year plans
near you

From: Margit Johansson [mailto:margitjo@gmail.com]
Sent: Wednesday, August 05, 2009 4:19 AM
To: Wayne Munster
Cc: Colorado Secretary of State
Subject: Fwd: (On mail-in ballots, etc) Watch out for colorful characters & 5-year plans near you

Dear Mr. Munster,
Here is some very interesting information on mail-in ballots and other matters from Blackbox
Voting.
Please pass this on to Mr. Hobbs, for whom there was no email address listed online.
Thanks.
In my testimony at the Rules hearing, when I mistakenly thought an affadavit was being
dispensed with, I supported keeping the affadavit provision because of a concern that mailballots need all the safeguards against misuse possible, because their chain of custody is so
weak. Bev Harris's latest research reinforces my concern. We in Colorado should not be goingalong with the mail ballot push as we are; we should not be going along with the internet voting
push for overseas voters as we are. The insecurity of the votes in these systems is not being
acknowledged by those with a stake in their promulgation.
At the Civic Summit (held in conjunction with the recent NASS meetings in Minneapolis),
there was a session on mail ballots run by the head of the Vote by Mail Project. A supportingorganization was the League of Rural Voters, which apparently sponsors or houses the Vote by
Mail Project. I spoke to a representative of that organization (it might have been Neil Ritchie --brother of the MN Sec. of State?), saying that good research was needed on mail ballots. He wasdismissive, saying simply that mail ballots were a "done deal". There were no opponents of mailballots presenting.
But back to my testimony at the Rules hearing: I may have strayed from topic
when mentioning the legislation that requires that the first vote cast under a name be counted, but
it is a problem, as voting in other people's name does happen in Colorado. I know someone inTeller County who has testified about citizens being informed they had already voted, in a
legislative hearing for the public a few years back. There was never any follow-up on thisinformation, as far as I heard.
Bev Harris has done a great deal for the cause of election integrity; she is one of the few
election activists who doesn't fall over herself to avoid pointing out possible wrongdoing in ourelections, as opposed to focusing on weaknesses in the system. But, as one of my graduate
professors pointed out when discussing technology, all technological systems are designed ortolerated by people. I say those responsible for the use of flawed systems should be held
accountable if these systems don't serve the public good.
Sincerely,
Margit Johansson, CFVI---------- Forwarded message ---------From: Bev Harris <bev@blackboxvoting.org>
Date: Tue, Aug 4, 2009 at 5:33 PM
Subject: Watch out for colorful characters & 5-year plans near you
1To: margitjo@gmail.com

Wisconsin is set to ratify a '5-year plan' which will advocate looking into forced mail-in voting,Etch-a-Sketch-style electronic voter registration tablets which eliminate the physical signature,and Internet voting. The combination of mail-in voting and physical signature removal pulls thewheels right off of mail-in voting checks and balances -- and safeguards for mail-in voting arealready inadequate.
By the way, the primary architect of current mail-in vote authentication software is Jeffrey Dean,perhaps the most colorful character ever to hit the election scene; at one point he worked for theman who headed the White House Plumbers unit from the Watergate scandal. Jeff Dean has been
to prison twice in the last 15 years, once on multiple counts of computer fraud used for
embezzlement.
****
Black Box Voting is one of the ONLY voting rights organizations doing tough-minded research
into the new vote-by-mail craze. If you believe our work is important, please consider support
with a donation: http://www.blackboxvoting.org/donate.html or mail to:Black Box Voting
330 SW 43rd St Suite K - PMB 547
Renton WA 98057****
Wisconsin's new 5-year plan echoes new proposals and changes in many states (New York-failed
this time, will be brought up again; Florida, part-way there; Indiana, part-way there, California,
most of the way there, Arizona, most of the way there, Colorado, most of the way there...).
Wisconsin's plan, touted by Kevin Kennedy, director of the Government Accountability Board,
would cost $17 million to make all the changes. Claims that mail-in voting increases
participation, or is less expensive, are now being questioned by many researchers. Some data
indicates that mail-in voting actually produces LOWER participation, and the high costs
associated with authentication software hint that it may actually be more expensive than pollingplace voting.
The runaway vote-by-mail train requires that I bring this up, whether it's politically correct ornot:
If you're concerned about bogus voters being entered onto the voter registration rolls by groups
like ACORN, take a deep breath. With mail-in voting, an even bigger concern is dumping REAL
voters who are UNLIKELY TO VOTE onto the rolls.
Black Box Voting research into the software used to authenticate votes indicates that people
unlikely to vote can be targeted to have an insider vote for them. Traditionally non-mainstream
populations like prisoners, the homeless, and low income may participate in elections at lower
than average rates -- there is not enough data yet to know. We really don't have any adequate
authentication mechanisms to determine whether the mail-in ballots submitted are real, from real
voters, or counterfeit, cast en masse by insiders for specific target groups deemed less likely tovote. If insiders counterfeit votes for real people who didn't vote, it will be almost impossible todetect.
2

VOTE-BY-MAIL SOFTWARE APPEARS TO BE SET UP FOR JUST SUCH A SCENARIO
Black Box Voting has obtained this court testimony, by programmer Brian Clubb, pertaining to asoftware programming revision ordered by Jeffrey Dean:"...if this voter showed up in the subsequent upload, then I need to find where he appeared in thefirst upload, tell them what envelope number, what ballot number he was assigned so they canpull it back out. "One implication of the above programming change: It allows an insider cast votes for a selectionof voters deemed unlikely to vote. If a voter actually does vote, it enables you to pull the bogus
vote back out of the system. (see pp. 1-20 for more background on above quote; full transcript:
http://www.blackboxvoting.org/1-10-06-04kim-v-dean.pdf - 1,007 KB)
By eliminating physical signatures, maximizing mail-in votes, and pushing real people who areless likely to vote onto the rolls, you set the stage for wholesale inside "VoteR" fraud which will
be very difficult to detect.
INTERNET AND MAIL-IN VOTING = CONCEALING KEY COMPONENTS OF THE
ELECTION
Internet and mail-in voting conceal the counting of the vote, conceal who showed up to vote (andInternet voting eliminates the physical record for who voted). Both systems open the gate forremoval of political privacy. Internet voting removes the hard copy evidence of the vote, just as
the new Internet voter registration systems remove physical evidence of the signature. BothInternet and mail-in voting remove neighborhood polling places, a key battleground for restoring
public right to know and public controls over elections. Once removed, it's difficult to restore
them.
While well intended, many local officials are buying into a sales plan cooked up by think tanks
and vendors. The evidence does not support the sales pitch that these tactics increase voter
turnout or that it saves money. Here is the progression we are seeing nationwide:
THE THINK TANK PLAN
1. Implement "no-excuse" absentee voting
2. Authorize Internet voter registration and "voter registration modernization" (have voters sign
Etch-a-Sketch style electronic tablets instead of physical signatures on registration cards).
3. Authorize opt-in "permanent absentee voting" (further increases percentage of mailed-in
votes)
4. Send press releases about the high percentage of mail-in voting, citing this as justification formoving to all-mail-in voting (forced mail-in).
5. Convert to forced mail-in voting for small elections; then convert state to mail-in voting.
6. Experiment with Internet voting.
Note that each step involves removal of physical evidence and concealment of more election
processes from the public. These steps are being pushed all over the United States in cookiecutter legislation. Local officials believe they are implementing just one step, but a review ofnational actions shows that once one step is achieved the next one is proposed. The steps arealmost identical from state to state.
3

Signature matching is one of the key "checks and balances" cited to tell us mail-in voting issecure. Really? A dog's paw-print made it through signature checks in Washington State for twoelections in a row. Yes, a dog named Duncan was registered to vote, using his pawprint for a
signature. Most people do not realize that the physical signatures are not examined -- only thescanned computer image.
Using computers, one scanned signature can be stretched and colors changed. Scanned images
can be imported and exported from the incoming absentee envelopes into the database containing
scans of the voter registration signatures. Note that with Internet voter registration and electronic
tablet registration, there is no physical copy of the signature on the voter card.
WHO IS JEFFREY DEAN?
Well, you just can't make this stuff up. He developed VoteRemote, one of the most widely usedsignature authentication software programs. Jeffrey Dean's prison documents are posted on theBlack Box Voting Web site - Here's the link: http://www.bbvdocs.org/dean/dean-criminaldocs.pdf
Jeff Dean was sentenced to four years in prison on 23 counts of embezzlement, achieved bymodifying a computer accounting program. He returned to prison in 2004 for contempt of court,
and has been back in court since on civil litigation. Black Box Voting has examined over 900
pages of testimony from his various courtroom adventures, and we have learned that hepersonally ordered several modifications in the mail-in voting software which disable some of
the checks and balances. His court transcripts are posted on our Web site.
You really can't make this up: Before his prison stint, Jeffrey Dean worked for the law firm
where Egil "Bud" Krogh was a partner. Egil Krogh went to jail after being in charge of Nixon's
White House "Plumber's" unit, the source of the Watergate scandal which led to the downfall of
Nixon's presidency.
While still in prison, on work release, Jeffrey Dean was given a contract working for KingCounty, Washington (together with his brother, Neil Dean), to develop mail-in voting software.
Public records obtained by Black Box Voting show that Jeffrey Dean was given a key to, and 24hour access to, the King County voter registration database, mail-in ballot program, ballot
printing system and vote tabulation software. Jeff Dean sold his "Vote Remote" mail-in software
to Diebold Election Systems (Now called Premier); his brother Neil Dean sold his company to
Pitney Bowes. The other large mail-in software system is now made by Pitney Bowes.
Mail-in voting software is unregulated and uncertified, and under control of the handful of
insiders who run the databases. Black Box Voting is one of the only voting rights groups
investigating this.
CASTING MULTIPLE VOTES WITH INTERNET VOTING
If you like the idea of a neighbor rounding up access codes of the disinterested to multi-votehimself, you'll love Internet voting. The Internet voting mechanism used in Hawaii -- voting at
home with a four-digit pin code mailed to voters -- was an open invitation to vote selling,coercion, and contamination by insiders. Some people voted more than once.
TERRIBLE PARTICIPATION
4

Only 6.3 percent of Hawaii's eligible voters cast votes on the new Internet system (as comparedwith 28 percent in a previous similar election), a record low. Vendor's response: "Our systems
aren't really about turnout. They're more about accessibility to participation." Huh? The election
commission leaped off the democracy boat altogether with this: "The technology side, it works."Your self-cleaning oven probably works too, but it's not a democracy. For democratic elections
to work, you need public controls, you can't have concealment of key processes, and you needparticipation.
Important steps -- I know, it's swimming against the current if you are a Democrat. But mail-in
voting is just as concealed and undemocratic as paperless touch-screen voting.
Block mail-in and Internet voting efforts: Internet and mail-in voting systems violate yourinalienable rights because they transfer control to insiders and conceal essential election
processes. Help to kill these proposals.

This message was sent by: Black Box Voting, Inc., 330 SW 43rd St Suite K - PMB 547, Renton,
WA 98057
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5

August 6, 2009
Secretary of State Bernie Buescher
Colorado Department of State
1700 Broadway, Suite 250
Denver, Colorado 80290
Dear Secretary Buescher:
We appreciate the opportunity to comment on the proposed changes in election rules. Below arecontributions from Coloradans for Voting Integrity (CFVI) board members and other members.
Rule 2.7: We applaud this amendment and any rule change that affords the voter and the county
clerk’s office the leeway and time to remedy incomplete voter registration forms and expand thefranchise to include more eligible voters.
Rule 2.13: The destruction of the paper registration forms immediately after digitally capturing
the data might be regretted on some occasions. Saving the paper forms for six months or a year
would be a more cautious approach to avoid loss of voter data through human mistakes andelectronic accidents.
Rule 11.5.4.1: As stated by Neal McBurnett, at a minimum, to avoid ambiguity, the words“close of polls” should be replaced with “after publication of the vote count tabulations bydevice, batch, or other audit unit.” This phrasing will ensure that the selection of precincts foraudit is truly random.
The rules should note the importance for auditing purposes of publishing those tabulations
quickly and in a convenient format for people to make copies of.
Rule 12.5.6 2: Establishment of polling place for early voting shall not be required for a mailballot election, ; HOWEVER, the location for walk-in balloting ON ELECTION DAY shall bemaintained.
Rule 13.2: We suggest deletion of “, to the extent possible,” in that with the relaxation of therules for people to deliver others’ ballots, some additional safeguards must be supplied by theclerk and recorder.
THE COUNTY CLERK AND RECORDER SHALL KEEP A LIST, to the extent possible, OF
THE NAMES AND MAILING ADDRESSES OF ALL INDIVIDUALS WHO DELIVER MORE

1520 Cress Court, Boulder, CO 80304
www.cfvi.us
Coloradans For Voting Integrity (CFVI) is a collection of concerned Colorado citizens dedicated to fair, accessible, and verifiable and verified
voting on the state and national level. Board Members: Mary Eberle, President and Acting Treasurer; Joe Richey, Vice President; Margit
Johansson, Corporate Secretary; Harvie Branscomb; Dave Larson; Angie Layton; Ivan Meek

August 6, 2009

page 2

THAN TEN (10) VOTED MAIL-IN BALLOTS TO THE DESIGNATED OR COORDINATED
ELECTION OFFICIAL’S OFFICE OR THE DESIGNATED DROP SITE FOR MAIL BALLOTS.

Rule 13.12.2: We are concerned about the method of “voiding” a turned-in ballot. If the voter
has marked the turned-in ballot, will those marks be visible to the person(s) doing the voiding? If
the ballot will not be visible, how will the person doing the voiding assure that what is being
voided is indeed a ballot?
Rule 13.13.1 (B): We suggest inserting “and specify” before the word “what” for better clarity.
IF THE COUNTY CLERK AND RECORDER IS UNABLE TO CONFIDENTLY IDENTIFY THE
ELECTOR, THE COUNTY CLERK SHALL PROMPTLY NOTIFY THE ELECTOR AND SPECIFY
WHAT ADDITIONAL INFORMATION IS REQUIRED.
Rule 15.1.2 (D): We think this requirement will assist in maintaining the integrity of the petition
process, and we applaud its inclusion.
Rule 25.2.1: This rule may be meant to cover both applications and voted ballots. Clarificationof the syntax seems to be needed. Perhaps just deleting the comma and “or” so that the sentencereads “may receive and return an application for a mail-in ballot” will make the situation clear, if
the intent is to refer only to the application and not a ballot.
Rule 25.3.7: Is it legal under the Colorado Constitution to apply a unique identification number
to a ballot for tracking and auditing purposes, if such identification would destroy the anonymityof the voter? If a voter will not be able to vote anonymously, will the voter sign an agreement, asper Rule 25.2.4 [“I also understand that by transmitting my voted ballot by electronic mail, I am
voluntarily waiving my right to a secret ballot.”] in which he/she gives up that right? In any case,a voter needs to be advised of, and agree to, the lack of anonymity required by this method ofvoting, which should be used only in the most difficult situations. As one of our members
opined, it does seem that there are times when it is in the voter’s interest to have such ballot
identification and tracking of voting data, and sometimes when it is not.
Rule 25.3.9: We suggest that the ballots received by fax, mail, and email be reported in separate
categories to allow analysis of voting methods.
A few typos were noted: imitated instead of initiated on p. 4, line 24; requests instead of request
on p. 5, line 18; a missing space between entity and license on p. 8, line 27. Rule 12.9.3 seems to
be out of place in the listing.
Thank you again for this opportunity to present our views and to request clarifications.

Yours truly,
The Board of Directors, Coloradans for Voting Integrity (CFVI)