March 3rd, Boulder City Council Update regarding Online Petitioning

When: Tuesday, March 3rd, 6:00PM

Where: Boulder Municipal Building, 1777 Broadway, Boulder, CO 80302

ACTION ALERT: Please write an email to Boulder City Council at council@bouldercolorado.gov and ask them to implement the online petition process passed overwhelmingly by voters in 2018. More contact info here.

The Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center has grave concerns about the fact that the online petition process that the people of Boulder overwhelmingly passed in 2018 has not been implemented. Evan Ravitz, Steve Pomerance and other informed community members appointed by the City Council worked very hard to bring this issue to the voters. Implementation appears to have stalled due to actions of the city staff. Evan has laid out the issues in a powerpoint at this link.

The following is a sample message:

I urge the Council to direct staff to accept the free open-source offer from Maplight.org for online petitions. Open source provides greater transparency than the private proprietary software recommended by City staff. The free open-source offer from Maplight.org, uses similar identification as that of the 37 States and DC with online voter registration systems (based on driver's license).

City Staff has focused on online petitioning that is an expensive, difficult, and proprietary instead of accepting the free, usable system from Maplight that organizations like the Rocky Mountain Peace and Justice Center have repeatedly asked for. The city staff has recommended "two-factor authentication," which is used for online banking accounts in which the bank calls you on your phone or sends you a text with a one-time use code. This is overkill. The staff is asking $222,000 for it.

The National Council of State Legislatures recommends this security only for administrator access to voter registration systems.

Please save the taxpayer money and more importantly go for transparency in online petitioning, not another secret proprietary software.