Black text is published text by Jack Johnson (former Pitkin County Commissioner, candidate for Aspen City Council, May 2009, as printed in a column in the Aspen Daily News). I have applied strikeout on the defective portions that I would not have included in the column, if I were writing it. (Harvie Branscomb)
Red text in brackets [] is by Marilyn Marks ( candidate for Mayor, May 2009)
Blue text in brackets [] is by Harvie Branscomb (Colorado Voter Group, Coloradans For Voting Integrity)
Can we keep a secret?
Aspen
Daily News Staff Report - (wrong- this is actually a regular bi-weekly column by Jack Johnson)
Friday,
November 18, 2011
Election law is complex. It is also important. Marks v. Koch
seeks to overturn a century’s worth of election law and should be reviewed by
the Colorado Supreme Court.
[The election law has not been overturned in any way. The Open
Records Law, which has been in place for over 40 years and which allows ballots
to be public records, has merely been upheld. It is modeled after the same open
records law that permitted the Bush/Gore ballots or the Coleman/Franken ballots
to be reviewed by the press and public to reach their own conclusions.]
No elected or appointed official in Aspen invented Colorado election law or the
secret ballot. They are only charged — for our benefit and upon our behalf —
with interpreting and implementing it. Average citizens, the press and even
loud-mouthed local public policy columnists all very much take the “secret ballot” for granted. We have
forgotten, if we ever knew, how hard it was to win the right to such because
much of the intellectual thought regarding election law and the right to a
secret ballot was settled in the 19th century.
[Actually “secret” ballots were allowed until 1947, and Colorado
ballots were traceable if an official peeked at the concealed ballot number on
the voted ballot. Before 1947, three election officials with
separate keys had to collaborate to open the ballot box. They could then remove ballots
stuffed by ineligible voters or fraudulent officials by checking the identities
of the ballots using the printed numbers. That’s not what we now (misleadingly)
call the “secret ballot,” but there was a requirement to keep ballots as secret as
possible using a glass ballot box and three keys. “Secrets” to be shared
with and by election officials are subject to abuse. So, in 1947, the
constitution was changed to guarantee that ballots are anonymous and the
officials could obtain no “secrets” about how we vote. Believe it or not,
that is what we now call the “secret ballot” or “Australian ballot.” The only “secret” is your
privacy in the act of voting the anonymous ballot. The contents of ballots are
no longer “secret” as that was a dangerous proposition. You can perhaps begin
to understand how poor a term the phrase “secret
ballot” is. It is utterly and essentially confusing. And that confusion is
particularly rampant in Aspen. That’s a confusion that is not at all remedied
by Jack’s confused opinion. ]
