CASTLE ROCK, Colo. — Earlier this month, Denver7 reported how more than 800,000 voters across Adams, Arapahoe, Douglas and Weld counties had Ballot Issue 7A on their ballots.
The one issue, Ballot Issue 7A shouldn't have been on any of those ballots.
If Ballot Issue 7A passes, it would create a tax increase for residents in the Front Range Passenger Rail District in order to build, operate and maintain the Colorado Connector train line.
In Douglas County, it appeared on every resident's ballot, despite it should've only been on the ballot for residents in Sterling Ranch.
Douglas County Clerk and Recorder Sheri Davis told Denver7's Douglas County reporter Tyler Melito that despite the mistake, Douglas County voters should still fill out their entire ballot, including 7A.
Watch the video report below:
This raised concern among some voters, specifically about would voting on 7A for someone outside of Sterling Ranch invalidate those ballots.
So Melito looked into those concerns, speaking with Davis to learn more about the process for counting votes.
"We are going to ensure that only eligible electors' votes are counted for 7A," Davis told Melito.
Davis told Melito the process for identifying whose ballot should be counted for 7A versus not is relatively simple.
"How we do that is we know who those voters are from the voter registration record because we have their address, and that is what identifies and sets up the ballot itself for what they're eligible for and what they're not," Davis explained. "By identifying those voters by their voter ID, we can identify them as they come in through, into the ballots envelope sorter, and we can isolate those into their own batches."
From there, Davis says it's about sorting the different batches.
"We can identify those batches when we get to the end. We count batches that are for 7A, and then we turn off 7A for the rest of the batches," Davis detailed.
Douglas County voters like Jennifer Patterson of Highlands Ranch will admit she was nervous about how 7A would be correctly counted when she first heard about the mistake.
Patterson volunteers as an election worker in DougCo, doing so for the last few years. On Wednesday, she and other volunteers got to see firsthand how the county plans to validate ballots.
"They used a small batch of what they call non-live test ballots, and I had to ask what non-live meant because these were ballots that were generated," Patterson described to Melito. "They're not real ballots of people's vote. You can't start measuring or sorting and tabulating ballots before the election, right? So these were test ballots, non-live and then it's kind of a function of flipping a filter that pulls out and excludes the ballots of those who are ineligible to vote."
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Patterson likened the process to how Davis and her team will validate votes to how they would in the event a relatively common occurrence in elections happens.
"This process of identifying ineligible voters is identical to a previously defined process, where let's say there's five candidates on a ballot for a position and ballots are printed, they're mailed out to people and then they come back to the clerk's office and then the candidate drops out," Patterson said. "I was really pleased to hear that because that means this process has been tested, been evaluated, been refined, been approved."
Patterson also noted the work that voters don't get to see when it comes to Davis and her team.
"These people put a lot of time and effort and thinking into every detail, and it's very reassuring to me," Patterson said. "What's really important to me and should be to a lot of people that this staff, they are very very capable, competent, incredible, dedicated, thoughtful. The team of this staff, they work together like a well-oiled machine."
Patterson says if people are still worried or unsure, don't be afraid to ask.
"I do encourage people if you really don't trust or you want to understand it... you need to get involved and you just need to see the process," Patterson said.
