Twenty-Five Years Ago This Week: “I had been attorney general for only six months when the awful shooting happened at Columbine High School,” said Attorney General Ken Salazar. “I had been to Columbine about two months before the shootings and talked to students. It was a very beautiful school. The next time I walked in to see … the 11,000 bullets that had been shot in that school.”
Salazar addressed about 100 Montrose Democrats at the County Fairgrounds, and said that the shooting at Columbine made him determined to do something to address violence in schools.
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“I had been a part of a task force on the National Association of Attorneys General to try and figure out what the issues were and Columbine made me re-energize my efforts,” Salazar said. “We’ve spent a lot of time helping communities understand how they can stop this process.”
Salazar noted that violence in the north and west areas of Denver was so bad that, at his church, “We were burying one young person every five weeks who was dying as a result of gang fighting in Denver.”
A CSU study, Salazar said, found that of 500 programs studied to address youth violence, only 11 were effective; the most effective were mentoring programs like Big Brothers and Big Sisters.
“Something must also be done about bullying,” Salazar said. “According to a Center for Disease Control survey, 10,000 kids in our state will stay home at least one day a month because they are afraid of going to school. If a kid is at school afraid … then their minds aren’t going to be on the subject matter that they’re facing.”
Twenty Years Ago: Judge Lawrence Manzanares ruled that the question of whether the state’s direct-recording electronic voting machines (DREs) are vulnerable to tampering and have not been tested for security, was raised too close to the election to give the state and the 64 Colorado counties adequate time to find a replacement system.
The lawsuit pointed to several instances across the state where machines failed or were compromised by poorly trained election officials.
Manzanares ordered the Secretary of State’s office to establish new security standards after the 2006 election in time for the 2008 general election and required the Secretary to outline additional security measures for the 2006 election.
“By any scientific method, the Secretary of State has done an abysmal job of documenting tests,” Manzanares said of the DRE security protocols. “The problem was that the steps taken to test the security of the machines was not repeatable or verifiable by anyone except John Gardner ‘the expert’ the Secretary had appointed to oversee the machines’ use and installation.”
“We are fairly happy,” said Andy Efaw, lawyer for the plaintiffs. “Essentially Manzanares’ ruling boils down to a decertification of the machines after this election.”
Deputy Attorney General Maurice Knaizer said he was equally delighted with the ruling because it meant that Colorado wouldn’t be frantically trying to come up with enough paper ballots to suffice for the 2006 election.
“Overall, we’re very pleased with the ruling,” said Knaizer. “The Secretary of State is always looking to improve the system.”
Secretary of State Gigi Dennis immediately issued a statement after the ruling: “Colorado voters should not be concerned about the security of the November election. We are fortunate to have a team of county clerks who take their job of providing a fair, open, and secure election very seriously.”
Colorado Democratic Party Chair Pat Waak disagreed and urged voters to register to vote by absentee mail ballot.
“This is the surest and safest way to have your vote counted,” Waak said.
Rachael Wright is the author of several novels, including The Twins of Strathnaver, with degrees in Political Science and History from Colorado Mesa University, and is a contributing columnist to Colorado Politics, the Colorado Springs Gazette, and the Denver Gazette.
