Denver and three other counties have been placed on an election watch list because of serious voting problems last November, and the state will send monitors to help local officials find solutions, Secretary of State Mike Coffman said Monday.
Monitors will be sent to Denver, Pueblo, Douglas and Montrose county election offices as soon as arrangements can be made, Coffman said.
He said he would seek court permission to directly supervise their next elections unless they fix the deficiencies.
Coffman said Denver and Douglas counties were placed on the list because of long lines at voting centers last November. Pueblo was placed on the list because election officials broke the law and didn’t verify signatures, and Montrose was notified because of multiple, serious security lapses, he said.
“In the last election, the vast majority of Colorado’s counties conducted their elections without any significant problems. However, four out of 64 counties had major problems,” Coffman said.
The top election officials in all four counties are no longer in office—one resigned, one retired and two were term-limited. Coffman said that provides an opportunity for change.
Alton Dillard, spokesman for the Denver Election Commission, said he was unaware of the watch list.
Douglas County clerk and recorder Jack Arrowsmith said he welcomed the help and said he was reviewing procedures to make sure last fall’s problems are not repeated.
Election officials in Pueblo and Montrose counties did not immediately return calls.
Denver—the state’s largest city, with a consolidated city-county government—has a municipal election in May, but that will be conducted by mail, avoiding at least some of November’s problems.
The other counties’ next scheduled elections are November 2007.
Coffman said Attorney General John Suthers told him he has the authority under state election laws to set up the watch list and send in monitors. The law requires the secretary of state to “ensure the integrity of elections.”
Coffman said the Help America Vote Act passed by Congress in 2002 after problems in the 2000 presidential election gave state government a greater role in overseeing and coordinating elections.
Denver election officials said software that was supposed to verify voter eligibility stalled during the November election, creating hours-long waits at new voting centers. Final results were delayed for a week when misprinted absentee ballots forced officials to sort them by hand and a counting scanner broke down. Denver got so far behind that police officers were called in to sort ballots.
In Montrose, a shortage of experienced poll workers working with new voting machines was blamed for programming errors, failures to test the machines and failure to secure the machines.
A secretary of state’s report made public last month accused Montrose County election officials of “flagrant violations” of security procedures but found no evidence of fraud or criminal misconduct.
Coffman said Pueblo needs to set up a system to verify signatures on absentee ballots and Douglas County needs to reduce delays that prevented some people from being able to vote.
