How Colorado Achieved The Gold Standard In Mail Voting - And Why Every State Needs To Emulate It

Elections board assistant works with other officials to perform a ballot audit from the June primary election at the clerk's office on July 10th.   Safeguards such as internal ballot audits ensure there is no fraud with mail ballots such as Donald Dotard claims.

Let's now take time to examine mail voting, given the level of sabotage against the Postal Service, and Trump's bombastic lying about mail ballots (despite his filling out such a ballot two days ago, e.g.

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/19/903886567/trump-while-attacking-mail-voting-casts-mail-ballot-again

But done properly and in a coordinated  fashion there are few methods as secure and foolproof as mail voting - despite what the Dotard would have you believe.  Thus, it is instructive to see how one state (Colorado) has perfected the method so that other states now considering it can do just as well.  Here are the details of our process:

- A central core of guidelines - no 'freelancing' by counties.  Each of the state's 64 county clerks  runs elections according to guidelines set out by Secretary of State Jena Griswold.  There are a few minor differences, i.e. in some of the specific wording, but by and large the system is the same statewide.

- Voter Registry and Upkeep.   One of the most important security features of Colorado's election system is the voter registry and its diligent upkeep. The Secretary of State's office checks with the post office, the Colorado Dept. of Public Health & Environment, and the Department of Corrections monthly to ensure that if anyone moves out of state, dies or is imprisoned they will be removed from the registry and no longer receive a ballot.  The frequency of these checks always increases before an election.

-- Timeliness. All eligible voters receive their ballots about three weeks before a given election.  They can then complete their ballots and either return the ballots in the mail (up to 8 days before election day) or they can submit them in a drop box.

-  Collection.  Bipartisan teams collect ballots from Denver's 37 drop boxes , for example, locking the ballots containing them and labeling them by location before delivering them downtown.  The same procedure happens in other counties and note here ALL drop boxes are under mandated 24- hour video surveillance to prevent any tampering.  Once we fill out our own  Colorado mail ballots we plan to deposit them into secure drop boxes.  (Note: the current cases in Montana and Pennsylvania to stop the use of drop boxes is pure vote suppression,  nothing more.)

-  Signatures check.   One of the things the bellicose buffoon Trump was recently heard bellowing -  like a stuck pig -  is: "And all those signatures! Who signs those ballots?"  In Colorado the process is straightforward, there's no hocus pocus or playing fast and loose.

Incoming ballots are fed through a machine that checks the signatures on the envelope against each voter' on file signature. (That original signature is captured - collected  when people first register to vote.)   The machine kicks out envelopes if the signatures aren't close enough to those on file.  A bipartisan team of judges then steps in to examine the signatures further.   Ballots with mismatched signatures not resolved via voter inquiry are turned over to district attorneys to investigate further. (In the June 30 primary, of the 211, 626 ballots cast by mail only 3, 862 were rejected because of a mismatch.  Even then the reasons  for mismatch are mostly prosaic, i.e. people forgetting to sign, or printing their names rather than signing, or absent-mindedly signing their spouse's ballot instead of their own.)

- Coding, Counting & Tabulating:  In the next phase, ballots are imprinted with a unique and random 10-digit number and fed through another machine that tabulates the votes.  Until the polls close these ballots can be counted but not tabulated.  That means that the judges enter the votes into the counting machine but the results aren't applied to any given race, i.e.local school board officer.   At all stages equal numbers of Democratic and Republican judges review the process.  And note, the atmosphere bears no resemblance to the current toxic, political climate engendered by the Dotard.

Tabulation itself doesn't require differential calculus or ESP.  As long as judges can clearly see how a person intended to vote the results are tabulated accordingly.  (The judges work through batches of about 800 and it is estimated that between 5 and 10% have to be adjudicated.)  Finished  ballots are filed into boxes, dated and stored securely.

   The process can continue for days depending on how many ballots are cast and how many arrive on the final day.  This is, of course, why people must keep their senses about them on Nov. 3rd and not let Trump distract them with babble about a "rigged" election because final results are not yet forthcoming.  The nature of mail balloting is it takes time and it is quite possible we may have to wait days or even weeks for the final outcome.  If that is the case, so be it, we wait patiently.  We do not succumb to Trump's hollering, barking and  anti-mail ballot "fraud" bull shit.  Nor do we let emotions rule our heads or lapse into premature expectations!

- Redundancy.  The voting and  mail ballot tabulation process for most states (e.g. Washington, Utah) contains built in redundancies and safeguards but Colorado officials have built in at least two additional ones:

i) A risk-limiting audit that takes place about 2 weeks after each election.  In this process county clerks are mandated (by the Secretary of State) to find a specific number of ballots and to check those paper results against the votes tabulated by the computer.  The purpose is to make sure they match and that the machine read them properly.

ii) State law requires county clerks to keep the ballots and envelopes stored and secured for 25 months. Just in case, i.e. there is any litigation or question arising from the results.  Say if blowhard Trump wants a recount because the fool believes something was amiss.

As one Denver clerk (Paul Lopez) summed up the process ('The Colorado Gold Standard Mail Voting Process', Denver Post, Sunday, Aug. 16, p. 1A):

"It's safe. It's secure, it's transparent, it has been tested. It's tried, it's true and it's pandemic proof."

If only Donnie Dotard could process that instead of flinging lies and disinformation all around like he flings his turds when critics - like Obama - lance his fat ego.


See Also:

https://www.factcheck.org/2020/04/trumps-latest-voter-fraud-misinformation/