March 03, 2008 07:59 PM UTC

"What Was That All About?"

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• by: Colorado Pols

The editorial board at the Rocky Mountain News wonders aloud about the decisions of Republican Secretary of State Mike Coffman:

After 10 weeks of uncertainty surrounding the technology that will be deployed in this year’s elections, it looks as if Colorado counties will be able to use the voting devices they purchased after all.

Nearly all the equipment that Secretary of State Mike Coffman decertified in mid-December got Coffman’s OK late last month. The vast majority require no new programming or hardware modifications. The only machines that haven’t yet passed muster are optical ballot scanners used by two counties that are still being retested.

And they may get a thumbs-up sometime this week.

So we’re left wondering: What was that all about?…

…The agency head – in this case, Coffman – is ultimately responsible for how he uses any advice. He chose to not talk to clerks or vendors, and this was a mistake.

For his part, Coffman told us House Bill 1155, recently signed into law by Ritter, allowed him to quickly recertify rejected devices. A big plus is that the new law eliminates any question about the propriety of consulting clerks and vendors during retesting.

That said, two widely used decertified devices might never have been rejected in December had he made a few phone calls. One, an optical scanner from Hart InterCivic, was inaccurately reading ballots with extra or stray marks.

During a public hearing Tuesday, clerks said they check ballots for stray marks before feeding them into the scanners. So he recertified the machines after clerks pledged to print a warning on ballots, telling voters not to make extra marks. Duh.