Liberal and Loving It

Oh Happy Day - Laura Thielen confirmed

My sister was confirmed today by the Hawaii State Senate as Director of the Department of Land and Natural Resources (cabinet position). Yes she's a Democrat but Governor Lingle had already appointed all 3 Republicans in the state to other positions.

A close reading of the stamp purchase statue

First off, I have to admit this postage required business really bothers me. Yes we have stamps at home - because my wife gets them. But when I was single getting a stamp meant going somewhere that sold stamps. Actually planning ahead - never. And I think most single guys fall in the same category, not to mention many others. If you're poor I don't think buying a roll of stamps tops the priority list.

The stamp requirement suppresses the vote of the disorganized and the poor. And for an amount of money that is probably less than that spent on the County employee's Christmas party. (Note: you don't buy a stamp for every ballot, you just pay for the ballots returned.)

Also a note. I have been calling this Hillary Hall's poll tax but the law is in state statue. So it's the state legislature's poll tax. Move over Mississippi, Colorado now has a poll tax while yours was ruled unconstitutional. So Hillary is just implementing the law as required - and that is exactly what she should do.

Wasn't Britian's Stamp Act one of the primary causes of the Revolution?

Ok, so lets look at the law. First is 1-7.5-107 4b which states (emphasis added):

The eligible elector may return the marked ballot to the designated election official by United States mail or by depositing the ballot at the office of the official or any place designated by the official. The ballot must be returned in the return envelope. If an eligible elector returns the ballot by mail, the elector must provide postage. The ballot shall be received at the office of the designated election official or a designated depository, which shall remain open until 7 p.m. on election day. For an election coordinated by the county clerk and recorder, the depository shall be designated by the county clerk and recorder and located in a secure place under the supervision of a municipal clerk, an election judge or a member of the clerk and recorder's staff. For an election not coordinated by the county clerk and recorder, the depository shall be designated by the designated election official and located in a secure place under the supervision of the designated election official, an election judge, or another person designated by the designated election official.

The other interesting part is rule 13.2 which states (emphasis added):

The county clerk and recorder shall keep a list, to the extent possible, of the names and mailing addresses of all individuals who deliver more than five (5) voted mail-in ballots to the designated or coordinated election official’s office or the designated drop site for mail-in ballots.

And provisional rule 12.8.2 (which may no longer be in force, but I found nothing that spoke to this same question in the later rules) which states:

ANY ELIGIBLE ELECTOR MAY DELIVER IN PERSON TO THE DESIGNATED OR COORDINATED ELECTION OFFICIAL'S OFFICE NO MORE THAN 5 VOTED MAIL BALLOTS FROM MEMBERS OF HIS OR HER FAMILY OR HOUSEHOLD.

Ok, so the law makes it real clear that the elector, and no one but the elector, must provide their own postage. The law also makes an exception for delivering ballots in person where clearly I can bring in the ballots of my family members. But there is no such exception for the purchase of postage.

Ok, I'm not a lawyer, but a logical reading of the wording here says my ballot is invalid for two reasons:

1. My wife bought the stamp I used. She has her own job and we have separate checking accounts so she purchased this with her money from her income using her checking account. It was not my or joint money.
2. I used a 2¢ stamp so the Boulder County Clerk's office paid the other 39¢ (thank you) thereby paying most of my postage.
   1. And is the County Clerk breaking the law by paying for part of my postage?
3. Do I need to charge my daughter 41¢ (which she will pay out of the allowance I give her) if she votes?

I think the bottom line here is that this law is badly written and needs to be fixed. Preferably to state that ballots have postage paid envelopes included with them. If not that, to state that any entity can give pay the postage for people's ballots.

Finally a h/t (thank you) to Dianne Marshall of the Boulder City Clerk's office who dug into this issue initially and found the relevant statues. She did a great job and did it fast.

And a h/t to the businesses on the hill for stepping up and trying to rectify a wrong. Everyone needs to go have lunch at Mamacita's, Hapa, or Half Fast Subs to thank them (I'm going to try Half Fast).

Is this legal, or is it buying votes?

I personally think that requiring postage on the ballots constitutes a poll tax and discriminates against those who don't have stamps at home - which probably tends to hit the poor harder. So I am all in favor of doing anything legal to reduce the vote suppression due to Hillary Hall's the Colorado State Legislature's poll tax.

In this comment Alan lists several businesses that are offering to provide postage for people as a public service. I agree with the concept. But I question if it is legal. It is illegal to pay someone to vote. And the stamp is directly tied to someone voting and it is effectively reimbursing the voter for the cost of their voting.

I don't want to get the businesses involved in trouble because their intent is to address a wrong. But two wrongs do not make a right. Possibly the answer is to give anyone walking in the store a 1¢ stamp as that is sufficient and the stores can offer that to everyone, not just voters.

Update 1: My question is not is this reasonable or fair. My question is what does the law say and election law is akin to counting the number of angels dancing on the head of a pin. Two individuals saying hi to each other can make the election actions of one illegal - as the two are then working in concert.

Update 2: After just 1 follow up email, 1 follow up phone call, and 10 day of waiting I got an answer from Hillary (speedy is not her middle name) Hall's office on the question of what do they do if they receive a ballot with a 1¢ stamp on it.

From: Jessie Cornelius (County Clerk's office)
If a voter places the incorrect postage on a ballot, their ballot would still be received and processed by the Clerk's office.

Update 2.5: While the Clerk's office pays the rest of the postage - that may be illegal.

Update 3: It's not legal. (I hope they take no action against the restaurants because they were just trying to do the right thing.) From Dianne Marshall (Boulder City Clerk's office):

Hillary just called with a response from the SOS.  The CRS (Colorado Revised Statutes) 1-1-13-720 does not allow for any person (natural or business) to provide anything of monetary value (stamps included) free to electors.  CRS 1-7.5-107 4b states it is the responsibility of the elector to provide postage.

And apparently it's a state statue that you pay postage a poll tax to vote by mail. I still think it's wrong and is discriminatory against the disorganized and the poor.

Campaign Update

One week to go! If you know any of the candidates send them a hug - boy do they need it right now. And with that, the latest news.

• The Boulder County Clerk's office has a great report on incoming ballots here. 12,517 ballots so far and the second largest number in was today. And if this goes like the special election, we may see over 25,000 votes total.
• We have a 3rd local political blog. Please go take a look at Tyson Politics. He has a very thoughtful set of endorsements with good reasoning behind each.
  • For those that missed it, the 2nd local blog is Real Liberal Boulder which is mostly about endorsements and who will win. But it's something. (standard disclaimer - he has some facts wrong.)
• Alan O-Hashi has video commercials. This is one of the great things about the web - before this a council candidate could never have had video commercials. In another 4 years everyone will be doing them (6 years probably for Susan Osborne).
• I just updated The Big Line based on the latest candidate financial filings.
• This blog continues to get about 500 hits/day. The really popular pages are the on-line debate and the candidate grades (more the individual pages than the summation ones).
• Apparently if you live in a corner house on Table Mesa you are required by law to have a yard sign for Lisa and Angelique. At the South end of town there is also an occasional Phil Hernandez, Macon Cowles, and Larry Quilling sign (never on a corner) - and that's it.
• Eric Rutherford wins the award for worst signs. You can't read his name on them because they are so busy. I only figured out what they were because I look for candidate signs - and it still took me awhile. And he's a Realtor - they live on signs with a giant clear For Sale on them.
• I asked at my daughter's soccer game Sunday who everyone is voting for - and again not a single one could even name anyone. But most said they are going to figure it out this week. How they will figure it out is the million dollar question (my guess is the web).
• 21 days since the Monarch cell phone story broke and still nothing from BVSD. Contemptible.

Did I mention only 1 week to go? And remember, you can mail your ballot in with just a 1¢ stamp. Update: This may be illegal.

Boulder Election - Open Post

No Daily Camera articles on the election today so here's an open post. Feel free to comment about anything in the City Council and/or BVSD election.

• If you are trying to figure out who to vote for - look at the online debate. Very illuminating.
• When you mail your ballot, use a 1¢ stamp - you do not need full postage.
• BVSD is still not talking.
• On the power question I think Ken & Macon's answers were clearly unworkable. I've asked them for comment but have received no clarification. Am I off base or do they make no sense?
• My sister is up for confirmation as Director of Land and Natural Resources (cabinet position) by the Senate in the State of Hawaii.

Show me the Money - last pass

One of the best indicators of support for a candidate is donations. And in the case of the city council election it is the only hard data we have as there are no polls, etc. I think number of contributors is a bigger indicator than total dollars so the candidates are sorted in order of number of contributors.

I do not include self contributions and I do not include matching funds as those just magnify the numbers for the more successful candidates. I also may have some numbers off slightly - this is from the postings on the City's site which is scanned in paper that I have to read sideways.

So what can we get from this?

1. Anyone to the right of Eugene (with the exception of Shawn) probably doesn't have a chance.
2. The 3 Board of Realtors endorsees clearly get a lot of $100.00 contributors.
3. Susan O, Macon, Lisa, & Eric have by far the strongest support in terms of number of contributors. For Susan & Lisa this probably means they've got it. Macon & Eric both have high negatives too so they're clearly competitive but I don't think they can assume anything.
4. Matt and Crystal are surprisingly low here. Way below expected. They may be in serious trouble.
5. And speaking of graphs, hat-trick to whoever at the Boulder County Clerk & Recorders office providing this graph. Very well done.

Money isn't everything (unless your name is Anna Nicole Smith). Endorsements count for a lot. As do friends and associates in the community. And there do seem to be a growing number of people that use the web to make an independent choice (at least based on the web traffic this site gets).

But it is an awfully good indicator...

Them's the Rules

Way way back (20 years ago) the magazine Computer Gaming World had a monthly poll of which were the most popular games. Anyone could fill out the form and mail it in and the magazine totaled up the votes and listed the result. Many months 20 - 30% of the votes were postmarked Hunts Valley, MD which just happened to be the location of MicroProse, one of the major game companies.

When they wrote an article about the obvious ballot stuffing one of the employees of MicroProse wrote a letter to the editor that basically said, you made the rules and we followed them. And he was right.

With that lets first go into the Angelique Espinoza issue, as covered in today's Camera editorial.

1. We are a nation of laws, not men (meant in a gender-neutral way). The law says that each LLC can write a check. So there is nothing wrong in accepting those checks. After all, many husbands & wives send a combined $200.00 yet in most cases it's one of them that asks the other to double up their contribution.
2. If a candidate can be bought for $500.00 the problem is not the $500.00 donation, it's the fact that we have a potential council-member that will sell out so cheap. If people thing Angelique can be bought for $500.00 - lets discuss that. If not, then why is this an issue?
3. With that said, I do think the law should be changed to only allow contributions from individuals. And possibly only from registered voters in the City of Boulder. Most contributions do match that requirement and we do have matching funds. But this is an interesting question because candidates with large families here in Boulder then have an advantage.
4. Contributions tend not so much to buy candidates (numerous Republicans in Congress excepted) as they tend to go to candidates that already hold positions the donor likes. The contributions are indicative of how DellaCava thinks Angelique will vote on development issues and that is a fair inference.

Since we're on the topic of following the money, lets take another little trip along the financing trail. This trip starts at the Boulder Mountainbike Alliance and a $15,000.00 donation from Wonderland Hill Development Company, the company developing the Washington School project. From there we travel to the City Clerk's page listing the BMA's $2,025.15 in campaign expenses supporting 7 candidates.

Does this mean that Macon Cowles, Angelique Espinoza, Crystal Gray, Adam Massey, Lisa Morzel, Susan Osborne, and Ken Wilson are therefore all unfairly getting ~ $300.00 each from Wonderland? And is this any different from the DellaCava donation?

After all, what if we have the "DellaCava Improve the Environment Association" and it runs ads on behalf of the candidates it endorses? Money is fungible and so it can always find a way to the candidates.

But we may want to require that any group spending money on the election must show it's list of donors. Because it's the reporting that brings out this issue.

Grading the candidates: Beam me up Scotty

When I was at the New Era forum the candidates were asked how they got to the forum. So the first said they drive a Prius running on biowaste, the next rode a scooter, the next took the bus, the next bicycled, the next walked, and the next floated in on a cloud of their environmental righteousness. I so wanted one of them to say I drove over in my Hummer and left it idling out front for the last hour.

The most recent Camera Q&A was on transportation. So lets get ready for the orgy of transportation suggestions that are totally impracticable for the soccer mom who has 23.2 minutes to pick the kids up from school, get them to change, grab the other kids in the carpool, drop them off at soccer, run to the grocery store, pick up the dry cleaning, and rush home to clean up the barf from the sick dog. Yep, the bus system will work just dandy in this case.

Yes minimizing car usage is a good thing for many reasons. And a reasonable effort supporting alternatives is definitely sensible. But the city also has to keep in mind there is a reason the vast vast majority of transportation here is by car - we don't have the density for a fast mass transit system and most people need to get from point A to point B quickly.

Ken Wilson C+ : Reasonable generic answer that doesn't say much. And he wants people to brag about how little they drive - don't worry Ken, all 22 candidates already do that.

Rob Smoke D : Rob wants to put us all on bikes. Clearly he's never had carpool duty when it's snowing out.

Eric Rutherford A++ : Ok, I did not expect this from any candidate - a very good answer that gets to the heart of the issue and what we have to do to resolve it. Yes, increased gas taxes are the one way to truly impact miles driven, would lower carbon emissions, and would benefit the geo-political environment. Superb answer.

Tom Riley B : Good solid points on improving things for cars, bikes, and pedestrians.

Larry Quilling B- : A large number of very good ideas, policies, etc on improving car traffic issues. Intermixed with that is an over-emphasis on bike paths for the amount of traffic they carry - but vehicle items are all really good and better too many bike paths than too few.

Susan Peterson D+ : Susan talks about everything except cars. So the what, 1%? that use something other than cars Susan is great. For the rest - tough.

Eugene Pearson D+ : Same as Susan Peterson - car, what's a car?

Susan Osborne D : Incredibly generic answer. Susan, what is the "path" we are on right now? Because everyone is arguing over where they think we're going right now (and if we're getting there in a car, bus, or on a bike).

Alan O'Hashi C : Very bike centric answer (don't any of the candidates actually drive a car?). But does speak to parking issues at the end.

Lisa Morzel C+ : Ok, very bike/mass-transit centric answer but her points on making that work better are good. Although I don't get her point that safe pedestrian crossing zones discourages single-occupant vehicle use.

Adam Massey D+ : Wow, Adam takes 2 paragraphs to tell us that he wants to "constantly improve" and "formally evaluate" our transportation systems. As opposed to what - just blindly continue whatever we are doing?

Kathy Kramer A- : Ok, Kathy is on a roll and lays out a bunch of good points. And she lists out a number of innovative ides for improving vehicle traffic. Don't know how good each idea is but this is exactly the kind of brainstorming this city needs.

Nabil Karkamaz D : Apparently Nabil doesn't drive carpool either - nothing about vehicles.

Philip Hernandez D : I don't think Philip has carpool duty either - wants us all out of our cars.

Andrew Harrison F : No answer (maybe he's out driving).

Crystal Gray C : Bikes, mass-transit, and parking garages is the total sum of her answer. An Eco-pass for everyone is an interesting idea but probably won't get a whole lot of additional people on the bus.

Angelique Espinoza B : A lot of good generic general answers touching on cars, bikes, pedestrians. And a good point on increasing mixed-use areas which do eliminate a lot of short car trips.

Macon Cowles D- : Strong clear statement that he is in favor of devoting 2/3 of our funds on non-automobile improvements. So the lions share of the improvements go to the tiny minority of bicycle riders. Nice for Macon and the 4 others that use a bike as their primary mode of transportation - sucks for everyone else.

Shawn Coleman B- : Good point that maintenance needs to be a priority. Doesn't discuss anything else.

Seth Brigham B+ : Good solid answers on improving vehicle transportation. Seth has impressed me a lot with a number of his recent Q&A answers - definitely worth listening to.

Philip Bradley C- : All he talks about are the new parking kiosks. I agree with Philip that the kiosks were a dumb idea but they're installed and removing them would be a bunch more money wasted. And... we face a lot more transportation issues than the increased inconvenience of the kiosks.

Matthew Applebaum C- : Mostly "all alternative all the time" but he does discuss improving things for cars some too.

Grading the candidates: Achievement Gap

And this week's question the the BVSD candidates is "Do you think the district is on the right track in addressing the achievement gap for minority students? What ideas do you have to reduce the gap?"

This is a really serious problem that the district has not been able to address. And the result is that many of our minority children will not go to college and will face a lifetime of limited economic and work opportunities. America is the land of equal opportunity only for those with an adequate education.

This is not the economy of "my great grandfather came here speaking no English and..." - because back then you could get a job in a factory with minimal education and English skills and make a good living. Today you need a college education to do the same. It's a different world.

And so, on to the candidate answers.

Laurie Albright B- : A number of good general items. And she is right that we do need to bring all these parties to the effort. Nothing about how we actually will make this happen though.

Ed Gazvoda B+ : First off, Ed gets the Joe Biden award for talking and talking and talking and... Lots of good points. But a large part of it is predicated on involved parents. Joe, many poor parents work 2, 3, maybe 4 jobs to provide for their family. They just don't have the time. And for many others, they don't see the importance of education - not to the extent that it requires parents to put in the tremendous effort needed to have some effect on the school system.

Helayne Jones D+ : Thank you Ms Obvious. Nothing more than trite generalities.

Jim Reed A- : Very good points and he proposes pre-kindergarten education which would make a tremendous difference. I would have liked more specifics but he has a really good start.

Rosabelle Rice C+ : Dual immersion is a success for some students but it is not a magic answer for all. Nothing aside from that one proposal.

Ken Roberge A- : Wow, starts off with a clear statement that we presently are not successful and discusses a number of core issues and approaches - great answer. And then in the final paragraph talks about solving it via the district's "goal setting process." Ken, has the district goal setting process ever accomplished anything significant? No? Didn't think so.

John Satter C- : Some obvious generalities but he then does at least get specific on the two main approaches he would take. Of course, we are presently using both of those approaches and the results stink.

So we have some pretty decent answers up there. The question is, while the new board actually do anything significantly different. Or will they continue to make little changes on the edges and wonder why they keep getting the same results?

Has the Colorado GOP totally given up?

Go take a look at the official Colorado GOP website. That's right, one page. No information on any candidate, issue, anything. You can give them money or sign up for their newsletter - and that's it. And the primaries (caucuses) are what - only 100 days away?

Guys - can't you at least pretend that you are trying to win something? We know it's going to suck for you in '08 but you should at least make some effort.