Electoons Provoke PetulANT Messages and Obscene Gestures from The Mayor

THE RED ANT UPDATE

Mayor Ireland, City Council and city officials have not responded with humor to attention from the national election integrity community concerning Aspen's May elections. They have consistently swept the problems under the ever-bulging rug,  as they continually attempt to publicly discredit and denounce those who ask questions or go so far as to advocate for election reforms. As nationally-known election experts chuckle at the adolescence of the local antics, Mayor Mick blasts them back with petulant emails, and greets his most identifiable critic with an obscene gesture. The Ant asks your help by both informing yourself of the issues, and making a donation of financial support to the transparency project.  The details follow....  

FINDING HUMOR IN THE POLITICIZED MESS  

The last few months have held only rare moments of Red Ant humor as both Marilyn and Elizabeth have been embroiled in bitter struggles with the City in each of their individual efforts to work toward future election integrity and reforms.  However, the national election integrity community has been rather amused by some of Aspen's unbelievable missteps in conducting its election. (Like leaving 30% of the at-the-time uncounted ballots in an obviously unlocked box in City Hall.)  

A Berkeley-based artists group, BetterBadNews.com, found humor in Aspen's version of "early voting," and produced a hilarious video referencing the City's confounding statements about voter  "privacy," perhaps mispronounced "piracy," and anonymity, or was it "animosity?"  (In fact, Aspen's version of "early voting" is not allowed by law. It was made possible by many rather casual interpretations of the state election laws.)  The creators of the video, after reviewing hours of City Council meeting tapes and written articles, now call our town "Aspenistan."

Our favorite "Electoon":

Click the image to see the video.  

Local public radio station KAJX put a little humor in The Red Ant's Christmas stocking with their commentary on the video.  Click for KAJX Story   

Mayor Mick apparently found no holiday humor in the video, and instead announced that it's "time to declare the election issue over." In fact, the mayor wrote an email blast to the "voting rights community" letting them know that their attention to Aspen's election issues is unwelcome. To ensure there was no question, he entitled his wide-spread email "Why we don't need your help in running our elections and why a recount is not needed." Mayor's email blast--Click Here  Needless to say, despite his attacks on Marilyn, the "voting rights" recipients got a few chuckles at his stubborn insistence that there's nothing here for any expert to see.   

THE ELECTION COMMISSION CONTROVERSY 

Elizabeth, formerly the GOP representative on Aspen's election commission, and her Democrat counterpart Chris Bryan found a hostile reception at City Hall to their requests to engage independent legal counsel to help clarify their roles and duties as commissioners after learning of many election irregularities.  For requesting an outside opinion on the city charter provision that establishes the election commission, the two were publicly pilloried by former Council member Jack Johnson and Mayor Mick Ireland on false, trumped-up charges of secret meetings, planning to misuse public funds and other "unlawful behavior" in an effort to deflect attention from the substantive election issues and personally defame Elizabeth and Chris.  

After just hearing the accusations against the commissioners, City Council quickly launched an illegitimate "secret" investigation by the City Attorneys of Elizabeth, Chris and Marilyn.   The city's violations of due process are rather outrageous. They include refusing to state the specific allegations being investigated or how and when any of us could respond to those allegations.  

 Council held a private meeting to receive the confidential investigation report of the attorneys. They exited this meeting and without public notice and a vestigial call for public comment, decided to put out a call for applicants to replace the existing commissioners. Apparently we are to believe that the terms of the Election Commission expired in July 2009, months before Jack Johnson began his Council-endorsed public attempts to discredit the commission. So much for due process.    

The local journalists have not written much about the election commission story, but the columnists and the local radio "shock jock" have pummeled Elizabeth, Chris and Marilyn --- buying into Jack Johnson's ridiculous conspiratorial claims and doing no research of their own. Any first-hand research would yield very different conclusions!  Given the self-imposed recent silence of The Red Ant, this left only letters to the editor and a blog or two  (Election Blog ) to report the facts.  The story is complex and the columnists have misled the public.  The truth has been slow to emerge, if it has emerged at all.  The Red Ant is confident however that it WILL emerge, and the public will be dismayed at what they learn.  

The story of the unethical behavior of Aspen's accusers and decision-makers is a sad chapter in our political history. After officially resigning earlier in December, Elizabeth recently demanded that the City Council clear her name of the false accusations made by the Mayor and former Councilmember Jack Johnson.  Lawyer Letter--Click Here Within 72 hours of receiving this letter from Elizabeth's lawyer, Mayor Mick passed Elizabeth in his car as she walked to the slopes on Sunday morning and gave her a petulant "one finger salute." 

 Ahhh, such leadership!   

The Bottom Line:

This Election Commission maintained the most complete public records of any board or commission in the City, and responsively turned these over to the city upon receiving an open records request. The records reveal Marilyn's lobbying the Commission to actively get involved in reviewing the election problems. Critics denigrate her effort as "conflicted" and that of a "sore loser," failing to see that defeated candidates (and any citizen for that matter) have every right to challenge and question the system through such established channels.  

MARILYN'S BATTLE FOR CITIZEN OVERSIGHT  

Marilyn has been continually on the front lines fighting for election transparency and integrity to be instilled in the Aspen election system, and attracting a good bit of national attention in the election quality advocates community.   Little did she know when she jumped into the mayor's race at the last minute last April that she would find that Aspen elections are conducted with a casual view of election laws and a creative approach to election procedures.  Her experiences have kept her hard at work, striving for opening the public records and advocacy for reforms for future elections.  Her work recently gained the help of nationally-known BlackBoxVoting.org -- sharing information and fundraising in support of her transparency efforts.

Marilyn has repeatedly assured the voters  (since May 6) that she is not interested in challenging the outcome of the election or seeing an official "recount," as the Mayor continues to claim (despite the fact that the deadline for such contests was May 22).   Instead, she is striving for complete access to public records from the election, including the ballot images (TIFF files) that were flashed on TV screens for the public.

 Apparently, the City feels that the viewing public could mentally tabulate those thousands of rankings shown in the few seconds made available to view each of the 2544 ballots!! In its lead-up to Instant Run-off Voting, the City promised a "see for yourself" election tabulation, but then refused to make the all-important images public again. Marilyn does NOT believe that anything that might be observed on the images would change the outcome of the election. The principles of transparency and citizen oversight are at the core of her litigation with the City (see below).  

Additionally, the software used for tabulating the election was not tested or certified in accordance with the Secretary of State's testing and certification requirements.  Errors were found up to and after the election. The counting method is so complex that the City refused to do hand counts or tabulation audits as promised. The normal controls inherent with precinct counting could not take place either.  In summary, much citizen oversight of the election was lost as the City had made great plans for state-of-the-art citizen oversight, but did not execute  the plans. While the City seems most interested in fighting with Marilyn, it's hard not to conclude that the City regrets its innovative foray into IRV and promises of extra-verifiability of its election.  

THE MOUNTING COSTS OF LITIGATION

After the City disclosed its intention to burn all election records in early November, Marilyn filed suit in state court to stop the records destruction and release the ballot images, a request which had been repeatedly denied by City officials despite the fact that the public had been shown these very same records on election night. The case should have been simple, demonstrating that the image files were intermediate records produced from the ballots, and therefore subject to public inspection. However, the City, after making several imaginative excuses about why the data is only for officials and a few citizen observers to briefly see, has filed long, convoluted legal responses running up the cost of Marilyn's litigation to over $35,000.  She sees this as a necessary investment in protecting citizens' right to oversight and verification of their elections, both in Aspen in all of Colorado, where more election oversight is needed, given our state's dangerous departure from the well-tested paper ballots in the precinct-style of voting.

Please help support this effort with a tax-deductible, anonymous (if you desire) donation. Litigation was initiated as a last resort, after 5 months of negotiations were unproductive, and was launched only when records were at immediate risk of destruction.

The Red Ant feels strongly that until Aspen's election processes are reformed and transparency is restored, there will be a chilling effect on recruiting qualified candidates to run for office, and the procedures s will always be suspect. The city has fought vigorously to avoid reviews of the more serious questions about the May election. Please support this important policy effort.

Your tax deductible donation, (please designate for the "Aspen Project,"), may be made through Black Box Voting.org, a 501c3.  Donate Here-  (Your identity will remain anonymous.) Please inform us if you can, of any donations so we may properly allocate them to the Aspen Project.

You may read more about the case at: Litigation details 

CITY COUNCIL SWEEPS IT UNDER THE RUG

Despite the many promises of City Council over the last 7 months for an election review and answers to questions, no progress has been made. Mayor Ireland announced on KAJX that it is time to "declare the election issues over." Councilman Derek Johnson says that we've had enough "looking backward and should only look forward."  He claims that we are "on a clear path for election review," but we have yet to see a plan or a footprint on that path. Councilman Romero stated that the City knows the issues and has a plan to address them, although city hall officials tell us they know nothing of such a plan. Councilman Torre's response was to quickly move to dismantle the Election Commission and to suggest changing the charter to reduce its independence and authority.

City Council has been quite protective of the election process from the time of questions about the legitimacy of IRV last winter to Millard Zimet's demonstration that the election violated the constitutional requirements of voter anonymity, as many voters' votes might be possible to recognize.  (See Big Brother Knows How You Voted--Click Here) The City's failure to address ANY of the problems and continued attempts to discredit those asking the questions speaks volumes.

THE RED ANT PROPOSES THESE SOLUTIONS:

1.    City Council should establish a goal for addressing election reforms in early 2010, to include an objective and thorough review of the 2009 problems.

2.    City Officials should embrace the concept of an election review and the help of outside experts, rather than telling them they are unwelcome.

3.    City Officials should re-visit their original commitments to transparency in the May election, and open the records in recognition of those commitments.

4.    An Election Commission should be nominated, as has been traditional, by the two major parties to preserve some independence from the Council. (Council should not be selecting the commissioners who oversee Council elections.)

5.    Citizens should remember that it is only with fair and legitimate elections that a democracy can work.  Little progress can be made without the support of well-informed voters to build and then to work to maintain a fair system of quality proven with evidence.  Voters who feel that this is a technical or political issue unworthy of their attention can expect to continue to lose their voice in our democracy. (Over 430 Aspen voters who voted in the May Council race  didn't have their ballot counted due to complex IRV rules, and they likely don't realize that they were considered "no-shows.")

Please help support the effort for election transparency and democratic practices in our elections. (Donate Here-Designate Aspen Project)

 

P.S.  Fear not, we have an active Red Ant plan for 2010 and will be back in touch with more Aspen stories that you won't read anywhere else!!  Happy New Year!!