Greetings Dick,
I am willing to have you put my name on this testimony and let it be
public
if it will help your committee improve accuracy of future elections.
Before Val and I left for a Healthway Fellowship in Western Australia in
the
election before last we went to the county clerk and registered or applied
for
an absentee ballot ... to be mailed to an exact address in Fremantle where
and
when we would be during the two week window that was indicted to us for air
mailing. I also called a week before we left to be sure every item was
covered
including my willingness to pay postage.
The dates in mid-October came and went and we were very concerned that no
ballots had arrived. Upon returning in Dec.2000 I called the election clerk
office and was told they had no way of tracking if my ballot had been cast
nor
if it had been sent. I asked to speak to top election clerk(LS) and finally
asked her what had happened. After several weeks I learned from her that
the
vendor in Seattle had been given names and addresses of certified voters and
the Boulder office "thought the ballots would be sent out from Seattle".
She
then found out that the Seattle vendor having sent them back to Boulder
assumed
they would be sent out from Boulder. The clerk said it was a mistake.
I asked how many other ballots had been impacted in this way and was told
at
least 70 and up to 2000.Shocked , I asked the clerk to send a personal
letter to
us and all other voters who had their ballots "lost". The latter was sent
and I
have it on file. I think you should get copies of all or any other letters
that
supposedly were sent so the voters know that their ballots were lost in the
lack of competence and miscommunication.
The serious error here is that the county clerk's office was silent on
this
terrible oversight ... perhaps hoping no one would ever ask, or ever know
that
these votes were never counted or sent ... and I fear that on one would have
ever been told if I had not persisted for several months to actually find
out
what went so dreadfully wrong.
Thank you for following up on this. I leave for Wash. D.C. at 6:00 am and
will
be gone for most of the week. Good luck.
Spense Havlick. A disenfranchised voter.
