Boulder City Council debated this week whether the local government’s current process for developing a voter-approved online petitioning system is sufficient, with a minority advocating a redo.
Council members Rachel Friend and Adam Swetlik split with their colleagues, suggesting the city reissue a request for proposals to build the city’s signature-gathering software for getting municipal election questions onto ballots.
Their dissent was expressed after months of resident Evan Ravitz — who advocated the new petitioning tool and was part of a local election laws working group in 2018 that pushed for campaign finance rule changes — making vocal criticisms of the project’s pace, cost and outcome so far. Ravitz on Tuesday had to be reprimanded by Mayor Sam Weaver in Council chambers for speaking and exclaiming out of turn during officials’ discussion after open comment.
The city in December struck a contract with Runbeck, an election services vendor, after a competitive request for proposals was issued. Ravitz objected to the work by vendor MapLight not being selected for the city to build the online petition system.
MapLight produced two “open source” systems, in which the programming code for the petitioning software can be accessed by the public and scrutinized and updated, but those were built outside the formal city bidding process. When MapLight responded to the city’s request, the offer was not for free development, according to a city staff memo to the council.
Runbeck’s proposal was based on proprietary code, software that is privately owned and can be sold only by the developer. Swetlik believes Boulder should explore revisiting the public bidding process to specify open source development is preferred.
“I do like open source software in the sense that it is more transparent, and we’re always trying to look for more transparency in this government,” Swetlik said. “I worked for an open source company for eight years and it’s not a great way to make money, but it is a great way to be innovative and constantly improving. … Providing an open source means of signing petitions that anyone could use I think is absolutely worth considering again.”
Another motivating factor for Friend’s support of revisiting the bidding process was a December meeting held with the city residents working group on election laws. Friend and Swetlik attended the meeting, held days after the city signed a contract with Runbeck, and took issue with the group not being more explicitly told the city had a 30-day opt-out it could use.
“The timing of having just signed the contract and the working group being told we can’t undo that, which I’m fairly sure is what was said there, it’s just murky enough for me that that’s why I would vote to redo it,” Friend said.
Whether the code on which the new electronic petitioning system was based on was open source or proprietary work was not a determinant in the city’s vendor selection, a city staff memo said. The working group at the December meeting expressed support for an open source system, and Ravitz has questioned why MapLight’s offers for freely built systems were not accepted.
MapLight’s maintenance costs for its system would have run the city $58,000 in the first year, $60,000 and up to $62,000 in the third year of Boulder using the software, according to city staff. The four-year contract with Runbeck consists of monthly payments by the city for the system’s development up to about $250,000, with $80,000 per year in expected maintenance costs, city staff told Council.
“I don’t think open source or nonopen source is the critical thing,” Weaver said. “… But you know RFP processes, once you launch them in cities, it’s kind of hands-off for the council unless there was something really, really wrong, and I don’t see a sign that something is really, really wrong here.”
City staff will move forward with Runbeck with the majority of the council, aside from Friend and Swetlik, in support of staying the current course.
Whether petition-signers would be able to withdraw their support for a petition after lending it electronically, and whether a cap for gathering the support of more voters than is needed to certify a question for the ballot should be in place for online petitions, could both be discussed by the council in the future.
Officials have encountered issues with how to verify voters registered within Boulder are limited to signing petitions certified by the city. A two-step verification process for voters using the system has been proposed, with a phone call or text message to numbers associated with voter registrations providing a code to users as a potential security mechanism.
“Council members have reported that both the Secretary of State and the Boulder County Clerk have expressed concerns about online petitioning for both policy and security reasons. Nevertheless, staff is in the process of finalizing a Memorandum of Understanding with Boulder County for access to a daily voter registration file,” the staff memo said.
City Attorney Tom Carr said the goal is to have an online petitioning system built and ready to test by June, and potentially use in the 2021 election cycle.
— Boulder Daily Camera to www.dailycamera.com
