Tell Governor Hickenlooper to veto HB 12-1036

Here's a link to communicate with Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper.
http://www.colorado.gov/govhdir/requests/opinion-leg.html

Under Jurisdiction—Please Select, enter "Legislation". Then enter "Other" as the bill number, unless HB12-1036 is now showing in the list. Put "Please VETO HB12-1036 and preserve election transparency in Colorado" in the Subject line and choose "Against". It is better not to check the “consider this message to be confidential” box at the end.. Here is the pre-formatted letter if you prefer to use one as a message. Edit as you wish. Sign your name as you wish.

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Dear Governor Hickenlooper,

I respectfully urge you to veto House Bill 12-1036. Although the bill makes clear, as did a recent Court of Appeals ruling, that the public has a right to view voted ballots as long as each voter's privacy with respect to the ballot is preserved, the bill's language seeks to block access for excessively long periods (and thus past the time when inspection might indicate that a recount should be undertaken). The bill's language would further interfere with verifiability by hiding or redacting ballots just before inspection instead of ensuring that all tabulated ballots are safely impossible to trace to the voter either by officials or by the public.

Only if you sign the bill, partisan elected clerks may find themselves individually deciding that while traceability of ballots is ok for tabulation and even for defined "interested parties," some information must be redacted for inspection by the general public.

Leaving such critical decisions to one person's discretion, without clear standards, oversight or a route to a remedy outside of the courts, is problematic. HB 12-1036's language promotes neither ballot anonymity nor electoral transparency. What we have now in CORA is better than the effect of HB 12-1036; the recent Court of Appeals ruling already reaffirms the basic right to inspect anonymous voted ballots.Please veto HB 12-1036. Ask next year's legislature to work for a better bill with clear standards for protecting secrecy in voting and meaningful electoral transparency.