The email is dated July 13, 2012 6:29pm. Friday night is typically a good time to bury a story, especially in the summer, but we shouldn't jump to conclusions. If the ballots were discovered July 11, they've had two days to figure out what they had and how to announce it.
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I did try to call the Clerk's office to get more information, but it's after office hours and no one answered.
The photo is one I took on May 10, 2012 during the recount. It shows a ballot bag with what I believe they mean by zip tie attached to the tag that identifies the voting location. The arrow is pointing at the clear plastic zip tie. Conversation I overheard at the time said it was pretty easy to take these off and redo them, but I didn't see a demonstration of that so I can't be sure.
It would seem that in terms of the election outcome, 141 votes won't affect the outcome of any specific race. But this would seem to be one more example of the general sloppiness of the handling of the election. The Assembly's attorney has met once with the citizen's group that called for the election recount to go over the many specific problems they raised based on their observation of the recount. That meeting gave me some confidence that at least the Assembly's Attorney is taking this seriously and I believe that the new Municipal Clerk is as well. This election has exposed a whole array of potential weak spots that someone intent in stealing an election could take advantage of. Given that voting is the fundamental means of participating in a democracy, I believe it's critical that every single one of these breaches is fixed before the next Municipal election and that the state Division of Elections is paying close attention.
Sloppy is not the word, DERELICT is more appropriate.
ReplyDeleteI think that it's time to return to hand ballot counting with a rigidly specified counting process (tally marking every five votes for a candidate, with 3 examiners & 3 tallyers, so that counting errors are immediately apparent).
Our voting, our elections, used to be something our country held in high regard, it was something we were proud of. Now, there are those who are trying to limit voting eligibility, or make it much, much harder to vote.
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