Reston Election Scandal – 12 Missing Votes in RA Board Elections – Did your Vote Count?

I went to the special elections committee meeting today to hear first hand what happened in the Reston Association Board of Directors elections.   Here is the bottom line:

1. A malfunction in the setup of the online voting system, setup with CVent, caused a problem with the initial electronic ballots.  24 home owner voters in the Northpoint area (and maybe some in other areas) were only presented with the At-Large position vote and never presented with the Northpoint candidates.
2. After the glitch was corrected, these 24 ballots were DELETED from the system, “to avoid duplicates”, and the home owners who’s votes were deleted were sent an email notifying them of the problem and giving them a new code they could use to vote online.
3. Of the 24 deleted ballots, all but 6 of the households re-voted, leaving 6 ballots (or 12 votes) unaccounted for.
4. In the election, 166 ballots were declared invalid for one reason or another, and 109 were declared partially invalid.
5. In the contested Northpoint Board of Director position, Mike Collins won by 1 ballot (2 votes).
6. Peter Greenberg, who lost by 1 ballot (2 votes) for the Northpoint seat, has formally asked the RA board and the elections committee to make sure that these highly motivated voters (as evidenced by their immediate participation in the election) be contacted to identify their voting intentions to insure that their votes are counted in the election.

So that is the situation.  Due to an election malfunction, 24 Ballots (48 votes) were DELETED, and very little follow-up was done explain the situation and make sure that these residents were able to cast their ballots.  As a result 6 of these home owners have been disenfranchised in the election.

The elections committee discussed the issue in the meeting, and decided that they would allow Mr. Greenberg and others inspect the invalidated ballots, they would allow BDO, the accounting firm responsible for counting the ballots, to provide Mr. Greenberg with more detailed information surrounding the 24 deleted ballots and the 17 re-votes.

The elections committee refused to take the further step, requested by Mr. Greenberg, of contacting the potentially disenfranchised voters, to clarify their intentions to make sure their proper votes were counted in the election.

Ken Chadwick, General Counsel for the board, advised the election committee and Mr. Greenberg that a Civil case would need to be filed and a court order would need to be rendered for any further steps to be taken in the election.

“Win or lose, I’m not out to change the election, I just want to make sure none of my neighbors were disenfranchised” said Peter Greenberg.  “Issues like these go to the heart of why I ran, as neighbors we have to treat each other very well and not see the association as something separate from it’s members, the members are the association.”

“I really know a thing about voter protection and voter rights, it’s kind of become a hobby of mine” said Mike Collins, “The worse thing an entity can do is make up new procedures after the votes have been counted.”

After campaigning hard, “…knocking on over 2,000 doors”, I think Mr. Collins feels the results speak for themselves, and that he deserves the Northpoint seat on the board.

It sounds like our local voting drama has some more twists and turns to come, stay tuned!