Special Saturday Edition: my plans for covering the election (I'm mostly sitting it out), and my thoughts on the recent problems with CO's election system.

My plans for posting around election day.

I am not sure about you, but I have heard a ton about the upcoming election.  I have never been more thankful in my life that I cut the cable to my house and watch only DVD's, than I have been this last election season.

The other day I was at a restaurant where they had TV's in the corner and every other ad was about the election.  Ads I'm used to, but the constant barrage (even during a short dinner out) of political ads ate away at my will to live!


I figure that there will be a ton of outlets talking election results and breaking them down, so here's my plan.  I intend to leave a lot of the early election coverage to those that can do it better.  

If you want a brief respite from it, save for a couple reminders to vote and to encourage your friends to do likewise, stay tuned next week for the usual series of things that caught my attention ABSENT minute-by-minute talk about the election.

If you haven't, go and vote.

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A sober look at the ballot issues lately in Colorado.

There has been a lot of noise lately about election security.  I put links to a couple articles about the two major stories below.

In brief...

--12 mail in ballots in Mesa County were intercepted in the mail prior to reach their intended voters, filled out, and submitted.  3 of the ballots made it into the ballot box prior to the scheme being caught.  There is no way to catch which 3 were fakes now that they're in the box.  The remainder were caught by election workers.  To put numbers in context, I recall reading that Mesa County has something like 91,000 registered voters.  The 3 ballots then represent (if that number is true) 0.003% of voters.

--Secretary of State Jena Griswold's office put a spreadsheet online that contained partial passwords for voting machines for months.  This wasn't made public til the state's GOP figured it out.

There is a quote by a CSU computer science professor Indrajit Ray in the article about Griswold that sums up pretty well my thoughts on both these messes:

"'It's not the end of the world, but it is a security breach and it should be investigated how this happened,' said Ray."

I don't see either of these things being a crippling blow to our state's election integrity. 

I don't see a wide-ranging conspiracy (jury's still out for me on the Mesa County ballots--this could legitimately be a group of people, a conspiracy albeit small).

What I do see is something that has been taboo these last years, especially for those on the left and left-leaning media:  the fact that sometimes people break the law, sometimes they screw up, and sometimes the system gets cracks in it.  

Could it have been better?  Yes, but our system mostly worked here.  Still, there will never be a 100% foolproof system.  Ever.  Period.  End of story.

Even if you could assume perfect design, the system is still run by humans with feet of clay.  They do dumb stuff like posting partial passwords online.  As such, reflexively dismissing concerns about election integrity, not even bothering to look at them, is foolhardy for a number of reasons.  

It's also what I believe the left-leaning media has been doing** for some time now.

What we see in these two stories is NOT vindication of election conspiracies.  It is rather a reminder that having concerns about elections and wanting to ensure the integrity of the process doesn't automatically relegate one to the realm of tinfoil hat enthusiasts.  It is a reminder that we should investigate reasonable claims of election tampering, if for no other reason than to reassure everyone of how robust our security systems are.

One last thing to leave you with.  Heidi Ganhal recently did a sit down with Free State Colorado about some concerns she's had with elections in this state.

I linked to that third below if you'd like to see.  I've not had time to look over her concerns, so I'm not going to weigh in on the allegations themselves.

I can, however, say that the way the media (see the Sun's Jesse Aaron Paul for an example) have treated the concerns she raises is a perfect example of the above.

Whether her allegations turn out to be worth a deeper look or not, they fit within the boundaries of reasonable and thus deserve a public airing and debate.  

**Well, unless we're talking Hillary losing to Trump.

https://www.cbsnews.com/colorado/news/least-dozen-ballots-intercepted-mesa-county-before-colorado-voters-received-them/

https://www.denver7.com/news/local-news/griswold-says-she-wont-resign-after-voting-system-passwords-were-shared-on-website