Today the Colorado Republican State Assembly met, and it was an embarrassment. At 10 AM the credentialing was closed, and we were supposed to approve the report of the credentials committee by 10:30 AM.

At 10:45 AM we were told to take a break and the credentials committee would be ready with their report by 11:15 AM. After many more delays they decided to start releasing counties to go vote on a county by county basis. I believe the first county was released around 1 PM. Boulder County was released close to 3 PM, and I don't think they were last.

Meanwhile I discovered that my wife and myself had not been given our delegate's information packages when we were credentialed by Boulder County, and therefore had no clue what the 20 resolutions on the ballot were. Since it was after 10 AM when we discovered we did not get our packets it was impossible to get copies. I managed to borrow a copy of the resolutions to study while waiting. Apparently this was a common problem as we saw many others who did not know how to vote on the resolutions since they were not printed on the ballots, but just the resolution numbers from 1 to 20.

Every delegate had a sealed envelope waiting for them with their name on the outside and two serial numbered ballots inside. This means this was not a secret ballot since they knew exactly which ballot serial numbers had been issued to you and how you voted.

UPDATE I have been told that the serial numbers on the ballots were unique to the County and not to the individual delegate. This was done to allow the results to be tallied by County.

To further mess things up each delegate was given two ballots, one for the candidates and one for the resolutions. After voting these had to be deposited in voting boxes, with one box for the candidate ballots and the other for the resolutions ballots. Ballots inserted in the wrong ballot box would not be counted. I wonder how many of the 357 delegates that were credentialed to vote but who did have recorded votes, lost their votes due to putting them in the wrong ballot boxes, and how many just left in disgust before being allowed to vote.

UPDATE Apparently after the initial announcement stressing the importance of getting the correct ballot in the correct box, it was later announced during the wait for the credentials report that either ballot could be placed in either box and still be properly counted.

One unconfirmed report said that part of the delays were due to Adams County not requiring their delegates to sign in when they picked up their credentials. Given what happened to use in Boulder County and to many others who did not get their delegate information packets when signing in, I could easily believe this.

UPDATE I now have confirmation from a second independent source that part of the delay was due to Adams County messing up. I also heard from two sources that Adams County had made a similar mess the previous day at the 2nd CD Assembly. According to a source with the Beauprez campaign the majority of the delays, however, were due to "the extremely convoluted process
demanded by the Holtzman campaign". To be fair I must note that the Beauprez campaign did agree to this process.

I can only hope that this State Assembly will serve as an object lesson in how not to run a State Assembly. Is anyone paying attention for two years from now?