The election reform advocate who has been blowing the whistle on ballots that can be traced back to voters is claiming that she “broke the code” to Boulder County’s ballot-numbering system last week. But Boulder County Clerk and Recorder Hillary Hall submitted a new, more complex vote-counting process to Secretary of State Scott Gessler this week, and that may make the discovery moot. Marilyn Marks, who filed suit against Gessler and several Colorado counties after it was revealed that ballots could be traced back to voters in Chaffee County, told Boulder Weekly that she figured out how to track voter identities using Boulder County’s system of serial numbers and bar codes, an approach that she says violates state law. The state Constitution says “no ballots shall be marked in any way whereby the ballots can be identified as the ballot of the person casting it.” In response to the Chaffee County discovery, Gessler issued an emergency rule saying counties must stop using numbers on ballots.
Marks claims that she and her group, the Citizen Center, figured out the numbering system used by Hall’s office over the weekend of Sept. 15-16 and were able to successfully trace ballots back to voters. “It’s something like a third-grader would make up,” she said of Boulder County’s process. “It’s an insultingly stupid system.”
On her attorney’s advice, she declined to give specifics about the number system previously used by Hall’s office, but that information is expected to be disclosed at a court hearing on Friday, Sept. 21. Marks acknowledges that the Sept. 17 memo Hall sent to the secretary of state’s office outlines a much more complex system, one that she has not yet been able to comprehend completely.
Full Article: Election activist claims she’s broken Boulder’s ballot code.