DENVER—State lawmakers who have been involved in negotiations on how to conduct November’s election said Tuesday they favor using paper ballots but haven’t worked out the details about whether they should be cast by mail or in person.
So far, Senate Majority Leader Ken Gordon said most clerks back a mail election that also gives voters the right to show up at service centers on Election Day to mark ballots in a booth or use a certified electronic voting machine. Gordon has been meeting with representatives of the governor’s office and county clerks who conduct elections now that most of the electronic voting machines have been disqualified.
In the meantime, lawmakers also want to let Secretary of State Mike Coffman retest and possibly recertify those machines but, this time, allow county clerks to participate in the testing.
Even if the election is conducted mainly by mail, federal law requires that the counties have at least one electronic voting machine available for the handicapped and anyone else who wishes to use it.
Some clerks have complained because they weren’t allowed to observe the testing and said that they haven’t encountered the same problems Coffman found. Coffman acknowledged that has caused “friction” with the clerks but said he wanted to avoid the appearance that he was being pressured to accept certain machines—an allegation raised in a 2006 lawsuit that forced him to recertify the equipment.
“We want more flexibility in the process, without compromising the standards,” said Coffman, who planned to meet with county clerks Wednesday at their meeting in Pueblo.
Rep. David Balmer, R-Centennial, said Coffman could retest the machines using upgrades and fixes but the standards for certifying machines won’t change under a bill he’s been working on. Coffman said he asked for more time to work on it because it wasn’t clear whether he could avoid the lengthy appeals process and whether he could put conditions on how some machines are used.
For example, some optical scanners were decertified because stray marks on paper ballots caused them to make errors counting votes. With the Hart optical scanner, Coffman said he was looking at whether that could be fixed by inspecting ballots for marks, removing those ballots and counting them separately.
House Majority Leader Alice Madden, D-Boulder, who has also been involved in the talks, said Coloradans will probably be voting on paper ballots this year but said both options—an all-mail ballot and a traditional paper ballot—have problems.
She said if Denver’s paper ballot counting system is not operating properly on Election Day, it will cause problems with an all-mail ballot that could cause a flood of provisional ballots. She said a traditional ballot would cause problems in Jefferson County, which has made a large investment in touch screen machines.
Madden chastised Coffman, a Republican, for not coordinating with county clerks on the recertification of electronic voting machines.
“This is almost criminal in my mind,” Madden told the House Democratic caucus on Tuesday.
Gordon said he wasn’t as worried about optical scanners because paper ballots can always be checked to make sure the machine is counting them properly.
Under the proposal being discussed, Gordon said ballots would be sent to all registered voters, not just the smaller group of active voters, and counties would pay the return postage. However so far Gordon said three of the biggest counties—Denver, El Paso and Pueblo—have objected to it.
Gordon, who expects a decision within the next week, said he thinks the election should be conducted in the same way in every county because different methods could cause different turnouts, possibly skewing election results.
“It’s going to be paper and it’s going to be the same in every county,” said Gordon, who lost the secretary of state’s race to Coffman in 2006.
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Associated Press Writer Steven K. Paulson contributed to this report.
