Thread by @shayshinecastle

Or maybe not. It's already 10:30; Weaver asking if council wants to have the petition discussion or not.

Friend wants to.

Brockett: We can authorize the collection of signatures now and then in a couple weeks decide how we're going to validate them.

Young: I think we need to discuss it now. It's time sensitive.

Nagle doesn't "have a lot of brainpower left," she says. Not in favor of discussing this now.

Yates is agreeing with the suggestion of Leslie Glustrom: "While we want to encourage ppl to practice social distancing, that doesn't make it impossible to collect paper signatures."

Leslie is, of course, a muni supporter. (Although Yates is decidedly not) But still...

Young is jumping on Yates suggestion to not make any changes!

Friend: My experience right now in the world is ppl are making less eye contact, they're staying away from each other. "I can't imagine it would be a similarly situated position we're putting ppl in to gather paper signatures."

Brockett: I don't think we should be encouraging ppl to sign paper petitions.

For health and safety reasons, he said.

Wallach is with Yates and Young! And doesn't want to discuss now.

"I just don't think this is the time to start a three-hour discussion."

Nagle: "I'm 100% on board" with Yates and Young and Wallach.

Wow. Just wow. Such an abrupt about-face from council.

The second such turnaround in this whole thing.
First it was, we want to foster democracy and consider the COVID limitations, so we'll create new thresholds.
Then, they abandoned that and were all fo online petitions.
NOW they are abandoning that!

Yates: It seems inconsistent for us to say, yeah go pick up food or do curbside retail but you can't sign a piece of paper that's sitting there.

Brockett: With the restaurant pickup, the restaurant person touches the thing, then you touch the thing and that's it. A petition is a shared piece of paper, potentially. If it's done with a clipboard.... ? It's not the same.

Omg, I just can't with this council. It's 10:30 at night and here they are undoing the very small concessions they made to direct democracy.

Joseph: "We're still in social distancing and we're still telling ppl to stay home. ... We have to do the right thing to move democracy forward."

Here is the staff presentation that Carr is going into now: www-static.bouldercolorado.gov/docs/7A_Electr…

Here's the story I wrote about this: boulderbeat.news/2020/04/15/cou…

One interesting thing about this ordinance, if council passes it: It would be temporary, sunsetting on Dec. 31, 2020. I don't think I've come across one of those before in my time, except for the moratoria, of course.

Carr saying it's very easy to find your voter registration number: Petition circulators could even find it for the person they are contacting, he suggests. It will add 30 hrs of work for clerk's office if we don't include that.

Carr talking about the rule that if 10% of ppl who the clerk contacts don't respond, that would invalidate the petition. Organizers don't like that bc, as they note, response rates are notoriously low.
"It's a harsh penalty, I agree, but it is a way to discourage fraud."

Also not that concerned about privacy issues raised by publishing the names and addresses of petition signers.
"Voter records are public records."

Weaver: I assume before you post the list, you've scrubbed ppl who don't live in Boulder.
Carr: I'm not sure. "Checking to see if they are registered voters is a longer process."

Swetlik: What in the current system that anyone can see of voter registration?

Address, first and last name and voter ID

I might be confused by this, but I couldn't find Yates voter registration when I tried, even though I had his address and date of birth. Another reporter had to request it from the Secretary of State. I thought you could only look up registration data if you had all that info...?

This makes me look like a bad reporter. Maybe I am. I mean, I could get them if I really tried, but my point is I don't think it's as easy as council seems to think it is.

Unless I'm wrong. Which is entirely possible.

Like don't you have to buy access if you want to see all the records?

Brockett: For paper petitions, are the lists of who has signed those online?
No, Carr and Lynette Beck says. They'd have to request it.

Brockett: "Posting things online would be very different from our current process."

Yates: With paper petitions, is it permissible for circulators to submit separate papers for each signature?
Beck: They'd have to have an affidavit with every signature.
Yates: But from safety perspective, they could use Dif pieces of paper for every signer?
Yes.

Weaver limiting council members to one round of comments.

Friend has "a lot of thoughts."

"I think we really have to be rational about what's possible right now. I personally have signed a lot of petitions and I know what that looks like. It's usually that you're on Pearl Street or at a farmer's market .... it's where ppl are congregating or gathering."

"If we pretend we can do paper ballots, we can't do that and with a straight face say it's going to be the same" this year, she says.

"I think we have to be sensitive to not inhibiting democracy. ... Most of the onus (for verification) should be on the city," not on residents.

"How many of us do not return every single email or every single phone call?"

"Inaction should in no way imply that you disagree with something."

Also in favor of a cure process for online petitions the same way that paper petitions have now. "Again, I think we need to put ppl in an equal position ... as we would be in without the virus."

Not in favor of having a voter registration ID either, as it is difficult for ppl to find if, say, they don't have internet, which is an equity issue.

And wants to extend the deadline, since we've lost several weeks. Suggests that city have a landing page explaining that it's legal to collect signatures online now, that it's legit and not a scam.

Carr: You cannot extend the deadline; you cannot change the number of signatures.

Yates: "I'm going to vote against this. I don't think we should advance this."

"This is going to be very fraught and complicated and I'm afraid no matter what we do, we're going to get it wrong or somebody is going to think we're getting it wrong and we're going to end up in litigation."

"To say that it's impossible is not accurate."

Encouraging groups collecting signatures to use the next two weeks to go out and get paper signatures, bc whatever council passes (or not) in 2 weeks might not be valid.

You heard it hear, folks: Stay home unless absolutely necessary, or you're trying to participate in democracy.

Here* damn.

"We're not inhibiting democracy: COVID is inhibiting democracy," Yates says.

"I'm sorry for the petitioners that they ran into COVID, but COVID has hindered a lot more than democracy. COVID has hindered livelihood and lives and homes."

Apparently there's another charter amendment petition effort that has started since last week. I'll look that up.

Joseph: "I find Bob's speech slightly irresponsible. If we still have stay-at-home order," I don't think we should tell ppl "go to the park, gather."

Joseph: Anything we're not requiring for paper petitions, we should not require for online petitions. "We should not add barriers."

"It's almost to the point we are saying no, we are not saying yes."

Just checked city election fillings: Still only three groups that were previously reported.

Brockett echoes Friend and Joseph, and adds: "I think the idea here is that COVID has interfered with this process of direct democracy and we have it within our power to give an alternate approach" that would allow direct democracy to continue.

"Worst-case scenario" is that something makes it on the ballot: "It still has to be approved by the voters." It's not like it becomes law immediately, he says.

Wallach agrees with Yates: We want to get to online petitions "but not under these conditions. We don't want a jury-rigged" solution. "I'm very uncomfortable with the direction this is heading."

Young: There's a reason that online petition systems use two-factor verification. That is the safest way to do this.

She's on board with Wallach and Yates. "We're jury-rigging this and at best it's going to be questionable. It makes me quite uncomfortable."

Nagle, too. *shocker*

"I do think in a time like this where we're trying to conserve our resources .... opening ourselves up to possible litigation is not the smartest thing."

"Boulder as we always say, we're special ... I'm sure the leading minds can come up with a workaround."

Swetlik: "We lose a little bit of democracy by not trying to find a solutions."

"We're supposed to be setting an example in this instance that we're saying ... you have to leave your house to go do something at this time when we're saying that shouldn't be the case."

Also have to consider the legality issue that many have raised, he says.

Swetlik: "I'm somewhere in the middle here."

But lands on the side of pursuing online petitioning.

Weaver: I don't want ppl going out and trying to get signatures, but I'm also "really really uncomfortable with every single thing I've heard."

He will be the deciding vote here. Friend, Brockett, Joseph, Swetlik on the side of online petitions. Wallach, Yates, Young, Nagle on the side of requiring paper signatures.

"I have not yet heard any way of fraud prevention and validating who it was that signed that," Weaver says.

"As much as I want to preserve direct democracy, I don't see anything in front of us that has to get done this year. The subjects of these things are not things that are imminent."

And with that, online petitioning dies.

Absolutely stunning set of reversals here.

I am rarely surprised by this council but I am surprised by this. It went from, "we understand this is a weird time, we'll put these on the ballot for you" to sorry, you'll have to keep accepting paper petitions.

What the actual eff.

That's all for this one. @threadreaderapp please unroll. Thanks.