Photo by PHILIP B. POSTON/Sentinel Colorado
Colorado’s elections are imperfect because nothing run by human beings — or artificial intelligence — is perfect
But Colorado elections are safe. They are accountable. They are remarkably difficult to manipulate. And, most importantly, the evidence shows they are accurate and they work.
So critics need to stop pretending otherwise.
It’s election time in Colorado. Ballots are in the mail and probably already at your house. Despite ferocious efforts by the Trump administration to illegally have the federal government commandeer elections and try and allow the Trump administration to jimmy the votes by bending and breaking the rules, it’s the usual procedure here in Colorado.
That’s good news.
Every election brings another round of manufactured suspicion about mail ballots, voter rolls, ballot envelopes, signatures and whatever else can be twisted into a social-media conspiracy. During the mid-term primary election, it was the color of a ballot envelope.
Seriously.
Former Aurora City Councilwoman Danielle Jurinsky received three ballots at her home and noticed that one envelope was a different color. She publicly wondered whether Republican ballots were being “flagged.”
They weren’t.
Arapahoe County officials explained that the color difference has nothing to do with party affiliation. It distinguishes unaffiliated voters so election workers can make sure those voters follow Colorado’s primary-election rules.
That should have been the end of it. Instead, it became another opportunity to cast doubt on a system that has already demonstrated, repeatedly and with abundant evidence, that it can be trusted.
Here’s what the conspiracy crowd keeps overlooking: Elections in Colorado have actual people, procedures and safeguards standing between a ballot and the final vote count.
Ballots are processed. Signatures are reviewed. Voter rolls are checked against multiple government data sources. Ballots with questionable signatures don’t just disappear into some mysterious counting machine. They go through additional layers of human review.
And that review is bipartisan.
If a signature isn’t cleared initially, a trained election worker examines it. If there’s still doubt, a bipartisan team of election judges reviews it. If those judges can’t establish that the signature belongs to the voter, the voter gets a chance to cure the ballot by verifying their identity.
That’s the definition of accountability.
If a voter says the ballot wasn’t theirs, or fails to respond to a cure request, the matter can be referred to the district attorney for investigation.
That’s accountability, too, and can result in justice.
And then there is Matt Crane, a Republican, former Arapahoe County clerk and current executive director of the Colorado County Clerks Association, who says Colorado’s election processes are among the most secure and mature mail-ballot systems in the country.
Crane is a Republican defending an election system administered by people from both parties.
Arapahoe County’s clerk is a Democrat. That matters.
Partisan election officials — Republicans and Democrats — have endorsed the integrity of their own elections and the broader system used across Colorado. They have every opportunity to identify weaknesses, every reason to understand how the machinery works and every incentive to protect the legitimacy of the elections they administer.
And they keep telling voters the same thing: The system is safe and accurate.
Meanwhile, naysayers keep producing questions without evidence.
That confidence should not mean blind faith. Voters should ask questions. They should demand transparency. They should understand how their ballots are handled.
Fortunately, Colorado election officials have invited them to do just that. Arapahoe County offers public tours of its election facility. Officials encourage voters to contact them with questions about the process. When the press has called and asked for explanations or documentation of issues when they’ve arisen, election officials from both parties have been forthcoming.
Last week, news broke that as many as 800,000 Aurora area voters mistakenly had a ballot proposition for a new regional passenger train district. By every officials account, state and local election officials say they have a remedy for the problem, and they’ve offered to prove it works as the election moves along. Rest assured, the Sentinel and other media will ask to see everything.
So send in the ballot. Use a drop box or mail it — in time. Ask questions.
But don’t surrender your most important democratic responsibility and right because somebody on Facebook has discovered a faux conspiracy in the color of an envelope.