Restonian’s Up in Arms over Election Scandal
In case you haven’t seen all the comments going back and forth over at the Restonian Blog here are some of the highlights:
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“24 North Point residents (who were owner/occupants) attempted to vote online and were only allowed to vote for the at-large candidate, they should also have been allowed to vote for the North Point representative. After RA discovered the error the deleted the initial 24 votes so that the people could revote in both races. They reassured the candidates that they would personally get in touch with all affected voters and make sure that they votes. Come to find out all they did was send a single email. Now after much prodding they admit that just 18 of the 24 revoted. That means 6 had their initial votes erased and did not revote. The question is after RA’s online voting system malfunctioned and RA deleted their votes is sending a single email sufficient follow-up. In my opinion no, every attempt should have been made to reach these people including phone calls. When you send an email you have no idea if it ever reaches the person. To me this is a prime example of voter disenfranchisement.”
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“Given that Collins margin of victory was 2 votes (1 owner/occupant household) this calls into question the results of the election. If RA’s online voting system hadn’t malfunctioned the results might have been different. Doesn’t RA owe it to the voters involved to make sure that their votes are counted?”
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“Given the board’s past treatment of Greenberg they should have known that a 2 vote victory for their (Chew) hand picked canidate would raise some eyebrows. They should have been out ahead of this one, particularly since the rest of the SBC canidates won their seats.
Unless there is more to this story? Get it together folks…”
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“Just call the actual affected 6 households. A win-win for everyone involved with this “glitch”. Collins and Greenberg agree to the tally and not to pursue further – we’re done.”
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“This issue is the one that will get me to comment when almost nothing else did.
An election process speaks to the credibility of the organization. If the process is flawed the organization is flawed and needs to be fixed. There has to be complete faith that a cast vote is a sacred vote otherwise what is the point of voting and what sort of candidate will be inspired to spend six weeks of time, money and energy in a non-election??
I would like to hear an explanation of how votes were deleted. By who and at one point? It took a lot to get me to post but this is the issue that did it.”
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“Precedent was set to reach out to the six affected households again, when someone at RA had to directly contact the affected households, during the election, due to a “glitch” in the online system.”
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“First RA did not volunteer the information about what happened. The squirmed and avoided direct answers until it was dragged out of them. This is not right and those involved should answer for their behavior.
Second Milton kept his mouth shut and let others shoulder the blame. Most conspicuous was Kate – who had a hand in the decision to delete the votes, took on following up and told people that it would be done right and then simply sent a single email that she did not know was ever received. She should not have shouldered or had the responsibility for these decisions. Milton Matthews as CEO the buck stops with you. How can you let one of your people stand out there alone? Shame on you,
Mistakes are made. Acknowledge them, put them right and learn from them. That’s a learning organization that can be trusted. Unfortunately that is not RA led by Mr. Matthews.”
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“Mike Collins – keep your mouth shut and hope this blows over.
Every time you say that you understand voter rights but nothing can be done about it in this case you look bad.
I didn’t vote for you but I also don’t want to be embarrassed by you.
Please just keep quiet.”
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“RA should have documented they reached the affected 24 households, documented the outcome, and validated the votes counted.
Any household that was not reached, should have raised a red flag, and all candidates as well as BDO notified.”
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And the comments go on and on, as of the time that I am posting this, there are 56 comments up in arms over how the Reston Association has handled the election glitch that caused them to then manually delete 24 ballots from the system.