BOULDER, Colo. — Less than a month out from Election Day, election judges are hard at work testing the systems for accuracy.
"Every time we've performed the voting system test, we have passed," said Boulder County Clerk & Recorder Molly Fitzpatrick. "Every time we have done the risk-limiting audit test, we have passed."
On Tuesday, the Boulder County Elections Division conducted an accuracy test on the ballots and equipment that will be used for the election. First, a pair of election judges — one Republican and one Democrat — mark test ballots together and take a manual tally of their votes.
"We're going to actually run the ballots that they marked through our scanning equipment, and then we will download a report," Fitzpatrick explained. "We're going to take that report and compare it to the manual tally that the Republican and Democratic members did to verify that everything matches and it's programmed correctly."
The bipartisan teams are critical.
"I love the idea of having two individuals who really have no reason to agree with each other making these decisions together," said Fitzpatrick.
Before the ballots reach the election center, processes all across the state also have several different safeguards in place. Denver7 asked Fitzpatrick about ballot box security.
"There are multiple layers of safeguards at our ballot drop boxes," she said. "They are under 24-hour video surveillance. They are picked up by bipartisan teams of election workers. There's strict chain of custody requirements, and that is true for every election official or every election office in the state."
Over the last year, President Donald Trump has criticized mail-in voting, a long-time option for voters in Colorado. He cited the state's use of mail-in voting as a reason for his decision to relocate Space Command..
“The problem I have with Colorado, one of the big problems, they do mail-in voting,” Trump said. “They went to all mail-in voting, so they have automatically crooked elections, and we can't have that. When a state is for mail-in voting, that means they want dishonest elections, because that's what that means, so that played a big factor also.”
Like many election officials, Fitzpatrick said that is simply not true.
"We have a signature verification program and BallotTrax to verify that the person who signed that ballot is the one that should be signing that ballot," Fitzpatrick explained. "We have BallotTrax to send a message to voters that, 'Hey, we received your ballot.' We've never received a complaint of someone that got a BallotTrax message that we received their ballot and they didn't actually vote that ballot."
Fitzpatrick noted that other election offices across the state and country have similar safeguards in place, and she encourages the public to see the process for themselves and bring any questions they may have.
"Transparency has always been important in elections, and I would say it's more important now than it ever has been," Fitzpatrick said. "You can also sign up to be an election judge or a watcher, if that's what you'd like to do as well, to see kind of behind the scenes what it takes to process these ballots."
Public tours of Boulder County Elections will take place at various times on Wednesday, October 29, and Monday, November 3. To RSVP, visit BoulderCountyVotes.gov.
To be an election watcher or judge for other communities, visit the links below:
- Adams County- Click here
- Arapahoe County - Click here
- Broomfield County - Click here
- Denver County - Click here
- Douglas County- Click here
- Elbert County - Click here
- Jefferson County- Click here
- Larimer County - Click here
- Weld County - Click here
