-Aspen's historic May 5, 2009 IRV election audited as single ballots- 5/5/09 Aspen CO held an instant runoff election (IRV) for mayor and 2 council members. Interpreted contents of each ballot, scanned by True Ballot, were publicly released. Open records requests for a CD of image scans were denied. Aspen has been sued to protect records from destruction and to allow inspection of the scanned ballot files. A Court of Appeals ruling holds that unidentifiable ballots are public records.

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Thursday, March 25, 2010

Punitive process: Aspen to voters, in a nutshell (letter by Harvie Branscomb)


Punitive process

Editor:

Aspen to voters, in a nutshell: Trust us. Of course we will do no wrong. We tried a really cool, completely new, election system. We promised transparency but didn’t fully give it to you, sorry. We gave you only enough to give you cause for concern, but not enough for confidence. If you are concerned, though, don’t come to us. We won’t respond positively to you, but you will hear jokes about how much of our time you are wasting. We hope you like jokes. Don’t go to the secretary of state, either. They don’t have jurisdiction over our election. We do. If you still have concerns don’t go to the Election Commission. Even if they listen to you, we can and will make them disappear. Don’t go to the court system either, because if you do we will do everything we can to dismiss your case; we will try to prevent you from getting the information you need; we will see if we can demonize you by making claims about your motives in the legal briefs; we will sue you afterward to punish you for trying. It will cost you a bundle to even try to get a day in court, and we will do our best to make sure you fail and no one else like you ever asks again.

Harvie Branscomb
El Jebel

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