- In what ought to be the first of a wave of resignations
by Elections Officials across the country who have utterly failed the very
voters they are supposed to be serving, one of three commissioners of the
Denver Board of Elections has resigned today in the wake of the city's
e-voting meltdown last Tuesday. He has apparently shown a measure of grace
and responsibility far too rare from most Elections Officials
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- Denver Clerk and Recorder Wayne Vaden resigned today
amid chaos in the Denver Election Commission which he oversees.
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- Citing his belief "that accountability is the underpinning
of honorable public service," Vaden said he was resigning from a "personal
disappointment over my efforts" with the commission.
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- The resignation came exactly one week after a disastrous
election in which absentee and provisional ballots still haven't been counted.
Computer glitches caused voters to wait in line up to three hours. Many
complained they were unable to wait that long and thus were unable to vote.
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- Hickenlooper acknowledged Vaden's frustrations, adding
that Vaden's acceptance of responsibility without blaming others "is
a reflection of his strong character and commitment to Denver."
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- Vaden, as clerk, was one of three election commissioners
overseeing the voting process for Denver's 350,000 registered voters. The
two other commissioners, Sandy Adams and Susan Rogers, are elected.Of course,
apparently Washington Post - who editorialized on Sunday that "the
system worked" - doesn't read the Denver Post, so they don't know
about Denver's "disastrous election." Or they simply don't care.
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- We've come to expect such failures from the country's
national media, but the larger question now remains will other failed Election
Administrators have the decency to do what Mr. Vaden did? Failed administrators
like Sarasota, Florida's Supervisor of Elections Kathy Dent who fought
against any sort of verifiable paper trail on her voting machines until
18,000 votes simply "disappeared" in the latest U.S. House race
in the 13th district? Or Florida's Sec. of State Susan Cobb who continues
to fight the voters in the 13th who, ironically enough, passed an initiative
on Nov. 7th calling for such paper ballots in their county?
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- Will Mikel Haas, the disastrous San Diego County Registrar
of Voters be man enough to step down amidst his failures? Or Deborah Hench,
the Registrar-Clerk in San Joaquin County, CA who lied to her voters when
she told The Record last March concerning her Diebold touch-screen systems
that "The state tested this system seven ways to SundayThey didn't
find anything wrong"?
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- How about Arizona's horrible Secretary of State Jan Brewer
who told AP last January that Election Integrity advocates in her state
were "anarchists" and "conspiracy theorists"?
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- All of those officials, and many many more around the
country (far to numerous to name here) have all presided over Elections
this year in which voters were disenfranchised due solely to their own
inexcusable decisions about what sort of voting equipment to use. They
chose to believe the documented lies of the Voting Machine Companies (who
had billions of dollars at stake on which to base those lies) over their
own common sense and a mountain of evidence revealing the systems they
had chosen were not fit for use in any American election.
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- Those officials, and many others like them, chose to
put their own careers over the needs of their own constituents - the voters
- and they ought to have the decency to step aside so that folks who give
a damn about democracy might take their places and try to clean up the
messes these people have wrought.
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- It's the least they could do. Though somehow, we have
a feeling the ones we've named above at least, won't be able to dredge
up such a sense of responsibility and accountability and decency. We applaud
Mr. Vaden, at least, for doing so.
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- http://www.bradblog.com/?p=3793
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