Sample letters requesting veto

Verified Votings request for Veto

https://www.scribd.com/document/342108288/Verified-Voting-request-for-
veto-of-anti-secret-ballot-bill-CO-HB1014

Heritage Foundation advocates for veto

http://dailysignal.com/2017/03/14/colorado-selfie-bill-opens-the-door-to-vote-
buying-and-election-fraud/

EPIC warns of loss of secret ballot https://epic.org/2017/03/secret-ballot-at-

risk-in-color.html

Rocky Mountain Foundations Request for Veto

https://www.scribd.com/document/342077625/Request-for-Veto-of-HB17-
1014-Rocky-Mtn-Fdn-Public

Professor Jeffrey Zaxs request for veto

https://www.scribd.com/document/342384540/Prof-Zax-Letter-to-Jefferey-
Riester

Colorado Voter Group Request for Veto

Dear Mr. Riester,

HB17-1014 needs the Governors veto. The bill creates a way to prove how a voter voted.
History has proven that doing this opens the door to voter intimidation and vote selling.

Without this bill, voters can tell others anything they wish about their voting choices, whether true
or not. A voter might tell their boss (who is a candidate in the election) that they voted for her,
although they voted for her opponent. A voter might trade votes with another voter by agreeing to
vote for a specific ballot issue if the other voter votes for a specific candidate. A needy voter might
sell their vote. A voter might agree to vote as demanded by an intimidating spouse, but vote quite
differently. Without the current protection of the secret ballot, voters would not be able to freely
vote their choices.

HB17-1014 eliminates the traditional protection against voter intimidation and vote selling by
making it possible to prove how one voted. Who would find this advantageous? How would this
change be exploited by intimidators and vote buyers?

This bill has consequences that are harmful to certain voters, and hence to the public at large.

Please inform the Governor of the terrible law that this would make, and encourage the Governor
to VETO HB17-1014.

Al Kolwicz, Boulder, CO

Dr. Andrew Appel request for veto

Dear Mr. Riester:

I urge Governor Hickenlooper to veto HB17-1401, and preserve the secret ballot in
Colorado.

I'm a professor of computer science at Princeton University in New Jersey. I work in

software verification and computer security, but I've also spent a lot of time studying
election technology and the history of elections in the U.S.

Back in 1850, the U.S. didn't have the secret ballot; people voted more like this
(and see the explanation here). Vote buying and voter coercion were rampant;
voters felt they couldn't vote their true preferences or they'd lose their job, etc.

Between 1850 and 1900, there was a long push for election reform, for good reason.
And the secret ballot was a hard-won result of that reform. It would be a shame
to lose it now.

You might think, "but the voter has the choice not to take a selfie", but really
a coerced voter can also be coerced to take that selfie.

I'll close with a quotation from 1855. Frederick Law Olmsted, long before he
designed Central Park, was a 32-year-old farmer in Staten Island, who in winter
1855 took a long trip through Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Louisiana,
and wrote about it for the New York Times.

In the following passage, Olmsted explains that, since Virginia did not

vote by written ballot (but presumably by open voice vote), voters

would be intimidated from voting to abolish slavery.

From "A Journey in the Seaboard Slave States" by Frederick Law Olmsted, 1855:

There are certainly, in the State of Virginia, a very large number of voters, strongly
desirous, either from selfish or other motives, that the State should be freed from
Slavery. I have conversed with enough myself almost to form a respectable party;
and if a party, for that purpose, could once be thoroughly organized and equipped,
and its aims well advertised, I have not the least doubt that a majority of the voters
of the State would rejoice to enlist in it. But, suppose a man could have been found,
with the necessary audacity to offer himself as a candidate to the people on this
ground, in opposition alike to the Know Nothings and those who, with artful absurdity,
assumed the name of Democrats, at the late election. There is not, probably, one
newspaper in the State that could have afforded to support him. If there is, it is
published at a manufacturing town, and within a stones throw of a free State, and
where, consequently, there are few, if any, resident slave-owners. If he had
attempted to make the rural population acquainted with his plan, he would have had
to do so, literally, by hunting them up, one by one. All the ordinary means of
collecting assemblages would have been denied him, or he would have been able to
make use of them only at very unusual expense. The poor traders and mechanics
 could not generally have afforded to listen to him, much less to vote for him,
because, there being no vote by ballot in Virginia, it would be immediately
known; they would be denounced as Abolitionists, and, at least, the
slaveholders, who are their most valued customers, would decline employing men
who so opposed their interests.

Sincerely,

Andrew W. Appel
Professor of Computer Science
Princeton University

Boulder County GOP request for veto

March 14, 2017

Dear Governor Hickenlooper,
I believe the Ballot Selfie Bill on your desk is like Pandoras Box. Please VETO
HB17-1014!

Boxed up as a trendy Selfie Ballot Bill and wrapped in First Amendment Rights,
HB17-1014 passed through the Democrat-controlled House and the Republican-
controlled Senate and on to your Governors desk with very little discussion and
only a few dissenting voices. The bill simply removes the mandate that no voter
may show their voted ballot and allows them to photograph and transmit an image
of their ballot at will. After all, what could be wrong with proudly sharing a voted
ballot?

Plenty. By allowing permanent public photographic evidence of voters with their

actual votes, the integrity of Colorados elections will be compromised at its root.

Colorado shouldnt open that Pandoras Box.

The Verified Voting Foundation, Electronic Privacy Information Center and Common
Cause point out that the right to cast a secret ballot in a public election is a core
value in the United States system of self-governance. Secrecy and privacy in
elections guard against coercion and are essential to integrity in the electoral
process.

The fleeting gratification of posting a Ballot Selfie could cost someone a job or
acceptance into a university, club, church, or board unless they voted right. With
the law that requires secret ballots removed and photographic proof available, there
would be a resurgence of vote trading, vote buying, polling place electioneering,
and government favors in exchange for votes. The degradation of our elections
would bring back the chaos that prompted legislators over 125 years ago to pass
the law that were so flippantly destroying.

Please, Governor Hickenlooper, VETO HB17-1014. The bill contradicts the Colorado
Constitution and other election statutes; it is unnecessary at best and very
dangerous at worst. It is the right and duty of Colorado voters to keep our actual
votes secret. There is a simple fix by only allowing clearly marked SAMPLE ballots
to be used for Selfies, both election integrity and self-expression can be satisfied.
Please VETO the bill and keep that Box Pandoras Box closed!

Sincerely,
Peg Cage, Longmont CO
Chairman, Boulder County Republicans