Steve Pomerance

The Daily Camera’s story of a week ago “Judge tosses Boulder ballot case, says there’s no right to a secret vote” discussed a case brought by the Citizens Center, a Colorado organization. This group’s claim, in short, is that the mail ballot election system used by some Colorado counties would allow anyone with a modicum of skill to match names to votes, given that they can get access to the ballots, envelopes, and county data-bases as allowed by the Colorado Open Records Act (CORA). This would violate the Colorado constitution, Article VII, Section 8, which states in part, “All elections by the people shall be by ballot, and in case paper ballots are required to be used, no ballots shall be marked in any way whereby the ballot can be identified as the ballot of the person casting it. The election officers shall be sworn or affirmed not to inquire or disclose how any elector shall have voted. In all cases of contested election in which paper ballots are required to be used, the bal...

I was at REI last weekend and ran into an old friend, Jeff McWhirter, who is the president of the South East Boulder Neighborhood Association. We got into a long discussion about the possible annexation and development of the Hogan-Pancost property. It’s about 22 acres, off 55th south of Baseline just south of the East Boulder Community Center, and perhaps the last significant piece of undeveloped land Boulder can annex without going into Area III of the Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan. The land is so fraught with problems that this process has been going on (and off) for about 17 years. The current proposal is for 120-plus units, part senior housing, some “affordable” units, and over 60 market rate houses. The issues specific to the site include lack of easy access to shopping and services, poor transit, and, more significantly, serious flooding potential, high ground water and threatened species. Unfortunately the data on these big issues is not the best. Current flood studie...