DENVER-
A vote on a bill requiring more voting centers was delayed Wednesday by a dispute about rules for letting the public or media view the ballots afterward to check for fraud or mistakes.
Lawmakers are hoping to avoid a repeat of the hours-long wait that some voters had to endure last November and took up Senate Bill 83, an annual push by the state’s county clerks to make changes in elections law.
But following problems in the last election, voting watchdogs have also asked for reforms of their own—including requiring voting centers to be set up for every 5,000 voters instead of 10,000, as currently required.
The secretary of state would also have to set up rules to more closely regulate how voting centers are run, including looking at how many computers are set up so poll workers can check with the county’s main database to see if voters, who are allowed to vote at any voting center, are registered.
The switch to voting centers caused long lines not only in Denver but in Douglas and Montrose counties, lobbyist Kristen Thomson said Wednesday. Thomson, who represents People for the American Way, said computer problems in Denver caused a bottleneck of people waiting to have their registration checked before they were allowed to cast ballots.
“We hope it will solve some of the problems we saw in 2006,” said Thomson.
But others who are concerned about the integrity of new electronic voting machines aren’t happy with a provision that would prevent anyone from reviewing ballots after an election unless they got a court order. Colorado clerks say courts have ruled that ballots aren’t public records and they want to clarify the law.
However, Tom Kelley, a Denver attorney who specializes in media law, said ballots are open records under current state law. He said the most recent case the clerks point to was from 1942, before the state’s open record law was passed.
“I’m afraid we’re being flimflammed,” he said.
Once an election is certified, Larimer County Clerk Scott Doyle said clerks need to keep the ballots locked up for 25 months in case the secretary of state or a court ever orders a recount. If the public is allowed to inspect ballots, he said ballots could get mixed up or could go missing, destroying that record.
He said observers from both political parties watch the counting of ballots to make sure things are done correctly.
“Clearly we run the election but there are watchful eyes from each party every step of the way,” Doyle said.
Kelley speculated that clerks want ballots kept secret because they are finding themselves under more scrutiny because of problems in the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections.
Sen. Ken Gordon, D-Denver, failed to get rid of the court order requirement on Tuesday. Senate President Joan Fitz-Gerald, D-Golden, a former county clerk, strongly objected to removing it. Besides upsetting the record of the election, she said opening up ballots to the public would violate the privacy of people who cast provisional ballots since their names would be on the ballots. Other ballots do not include a voter’s name.
Bill sponsor Sen. Ron Tupa, D-Boulder, said Wednesday that the final Senate vote on the bill was being delayed to see if lawmakers could reach a compromise on the public access issue. If it passes it would still have to be considered by the House, where even more changes could be made.
The bill is also controversial because it would allow parolees to vote.
Other changes, backed by People for the American Way and Colorado Common Cause, include allowing college students to use their school identification cards to prove their identity in order to vote and encouraging more people to work as election judges by allowing them to work half days, rather than having to take the whole day off from work or away from their children.
