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Electile dysfunction
By Andrew Flohr-Spence
spencand@mscd.edu

When I first noticed an official-looking letter sticking out of my mailbox, I thought that maybe I had won a sweepstakes. The large envelope took a bit of wrestling to remove, but I finally yanked it free and anxiously read the bold type – only to be disappointed. “Official Ballot Enclosed,” was written on the side. Another election? I was sure there must be some mistake. I thought it was probably the letter from the Denver Election Commission finally reaching me from last November, but, sadly, I was mistaken.

Apparently, last fall’s Nov. 7 election was such a debacle that Auditor Dennis Gallagher and Councilwoman Rosemary Rodriguez decided radical action was warranted. The pair put their heads together and worked their political magic, and it was now time to vote for radical change.

On Jan. 30, the enclosed ballot read, Denver would vote on whether or not to simplify the city’s election commission. Instead of three commissioners, the plan was to have one elected county clerk and recorder.

The special election is being conducted purely by absentee ballot. The voter is expected to fill in the “yes” or “no” box, stick the ballot back in the return envelope, scrape together 63 cents in postage, and send it back to whence it came. For those too poor to pay the postage, or just too offended at being stuck paying to vote, the letter can also be dropped off at several locations.

As I quickly read over the document, the burned-out old hippie that lives below me emerged from his apartment.

“You see that shit they’re trying to pull?” he asked, nodding at the paper in my hand. “The million-dollar computers failed them, 20,000 voters were disenfranchised, and now they reshuffle a bit at the top and call it good.”

“I didn’t even know an election was scheduled,” I said, shrugging.

“Yeah, well they don’t exactly scream it from the mountaintops,” he said enthusiastically. “They make it as difficult as possible, so nobody votes, so they can have all the power.”

“I don’t know,” I said, moving toward the stairs and away from him. “The mail-in ballot seems easy enough.”

He mumbled something about not having enough goddamn stamps and went out the front door. Climbing the stairs, I laughed about the idea that a conspiracy might be behind the Denver election. Still, the idea that the ballot in my hand would somehow lead to real change was also laughable.

Replacing the present democratic and bureaucratic system of two elected commissioners and one mayoral appointee, the proposed reorganization would streamline the process, placing the responsibility solely on one commissioner appointed by the mayor. The idea was that the new election czar would have the power to crack his whip and get things done.

“We need someone who’s going to be accountable,” Gallagher was quoted as saying. He assured us that “an election clerk will be more likely to want to make sure that the technology works.”

This may be what voters want to hear, but something about “more likely to want to make sure” seems to lack any urgency whatsoever. What exactly does the number of commissioners have to do with the problem, anyway? If there was a conspiracy afoot here, it was a conspiracy of dunces.

Denver has used the three-member commission since 1904. Was something different about this last election? Something, indeed. The technology was what fell apart, and the way people were trained to use that technology. The vote on Jan. 30 is a wild change in the leadership of Denver’s election system, but the real problem sits all the way at the bottom. Instead of spending $650,000 on another election in a futile symbolic gesture, the energy should be spent on making sure that the machines work and that the people know how to use them.