Millard Zimet's commentary about his complaint

Mick! Marilyn! SEX! Now that I’ve got your attention, let’s talk about your rights under the Colorado Constitution to have a secret ballot election.

I recently filed a complaint with the Aspen Election Commission, asking the Commission to determine whether Aspen’s May 2009 election was a secret ballot election as required under the Colorado Constitution. I’d like a few moments of your time to explain why I did that and why your rights are at stake.

They know where you voted and they know when you voted. Each precinct has a log, where you are signed into the system in the order that you entered. That log is a public document, and the campaigns of all the serious candidates monitor the logs so they can keep track of who voted and who didn’t. Big Brother government is the keeper of the logs, but many people have full copies of them.

Can they find out how you voted? Decide for yourself. The City scanned all the ballots. Then they released data (called the “Strings”) showing how each ballot was voted.

Unfortunately the City didn’t “shuffle”, or otherwise randomize, the order of the Strings before they released that data. And the City never shuffled the ballots. Rather, the City says they “cut” the ballot deck, and took some other sorting measures, when they scanned the ballots.