Cross posted at Brian's Utah Weblog
Local wags Frank Pignanelli and LaVarr Webb suggest in their column that House Speaker Curtis should have a full time chief of staff.
Perhaps a chief of staff is what already scandal-plagued Speaker Curtis (R-Sandy) needs. The Utah House Of Representatives sure needs some kind of improved leadership and organization.
In the 2005 general session, our legislators passed a bill requiring that our new voting equipment produce a voter verifiable paper trail. The governor signed the bill into law and our right to vote was secure.
But Speaker Curtis (who had to resign his county job for filing fradulent expense vouchers) and Senate President Valentine (R-Orem) prepared an incorrect version of the bill for the governor and his signature was meaningless.
There was some confusion as work on the last day of the session extended toward midnight. The bill was already a substitute and Republicans wanted to grab the top ballot position even when Democrats won it, as is Utah tradition, by electing a county clerk from their party. But that amendment was stripped out late in the evening before the bill passed.
And somehow the Speaker and President couldn't complete their constitutional duty to prepare a valid copy of the bill for the governor. It should have been pretty easy since it was already published accurately online at the legislature's website.
Then the governor called a special session so that the legislature could pass a 'revised' version of the bill that allowed buying new voting equipment without a verifiable paper ballot. But only if the voting equipment lobbyists had already persuaded a commission to approve it before January. Lo and behold, Diebold had done just that.
In May, Lieutenant Governor Herbert announced that he had chosen to recommend Diebold digital voting equipment with an untested, untried "paper under glass" system. The new system is not proved secure, was not demonstrated to voters at the mandated election mock-up, and has not been recountable at all in elections in Nevada. Worst of all, there is no guarantee of a secret ballot with this kind of equipment. If anyone can read the paper roll, that person can pretty easily figure out which ballot is yours.
Maybe the problem here is too much to be solved by just one new full time employee in the Speaker's office.