1999-08-25 Charter Commission Minutes (2)

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minutes 8-25-99Page 27 of 60 no paper and then the room goes silent and so I don’t know if people would accept that and I don’t know if a Special Charter Election would be the place to try it out. I would probably have to recommend against that at this time. RAY: I want to ask our attorney to make some comments. YUEN: Just briefly on this question of procedures that George Martin was asking about. There are some State laws on elections that do apply to any kind of County election, including a Special Election. And these are things like; you have to register voters, signing the poll book, availability to vote at a precinct, the availability of casting absentee ballots. A lot of the things you see in the elections that you voted in. The State law does not specify the mechanical system of voting. That, I guess, has just been done by the State Elections Administrator, has picked a system in the past and if the County wanted to buy it’s own equipment to actually cast and count the ballots. That is up to the County but there are some procedures that would have to be followed in any Charter Special Election. RAY: Marni. HERKES: I notice that the last figures we have available are from 1979 and I also notice that there are, in the private sector anyway, were some fairly extensive improvements in communication tools since 1979. This is 20 years ago we’re talking about and I think that there are ways, when we’re dealing with time lines, that there are lots of different ways that this process doesn’t have to take so long, and I’d like to investigate some of those ways. I think that Mr. Konishi’s question, when he goes out and asks, is probably several years old and I think that Lions Clubs are probably not the best place to ask a computerized question but I think you’ll find a lot of groups, Rotary Clubs included, who feel comfortable with a computerized voting system. They don’t feel comfortable when there are discrepancies in counting them but they do feel comfortable without paper because we’re all looking to do things that way, and I think that there’s a change in people’s attitudes to different ways of doing things and I certainly would encourage the Elections Division to do that, but that’s not saying that I’m in favor of a Special Election. It’s just that I am in favor of looking at different ways of doing it. RAY: John. SANTANGELO: For me, my litmus test is the integrity. Sounds like you can print things and sounds like you can get the stuff out. Looks like there’s a price tag attached to it. So for me, our lawyer brought up some of the points that were germane to me. You’ve got to be able to register voters. You’ve got to be able to at least know that you’ve got the people voting that are legitimate voters, legal, and that’s a whole process unto itself. And I can see how you would not want to have to duplicate that, especially with the Presidential one coming but I do believe that problems have solutions and if we decided to have one, I think you could deal with it. What I want to hear, though, is we should have an overpowering reason for a Special Election because this is going to be an extreme cost. I look at this money and I see about six or eight police officers. There’s just other things we could do with that money that seem to be on a higher priority list with me at this point. But for this Commission to decide, it would seem to me, that we would want to have something that was overpowering that the public would want to deal with this prior to the next election. And so for us to decide that, I think it’s important for us to know what are the real obstacles and not - you know, liars use facts and facts go with liars - just real, real straight forward. It is a lot of work but like what Chris brought up, some of the side bars on the other parts of elections, it seems rather cumbersome. Is there other things that you could give us so that if we were to consider this, and we’re not considering it now, then we’d really know what we were laying on the public? file://\\coh01\cohweb\council\charter_commission\minutes\minutes 8-25-99.html7/1/2011