Lawmakers crafting the specifics of how Colorado’s elections will look this year are considering pushing back a requirement that counties report their results by precinct.
Sen. Ken Gordon, a Denver Democrat who is drafting a bill to put this year’s elections plan into law, said delaying the precinct-reporting requirement for a year would take pressure off county clerks.
“I think that solves a lot of problems,” he said.
Gov. Bill Ritter and a bipartisan group of legislative leaders announced last week that they support using traditional paper ballots filled out at polling places this year. The announcement came in response to the uncertainty created when many of Colorado’s electronic voting machines were decertified, leaving many counties without a way to hold elections.
Large counties typically have dozens of ballot styles for the various city, school-district, water-district and fire-district elections a voter might be eligible to vote in. Further splitting those ballot styles into small precincts would mean some counties could have hundreds of ballot styles in a given election.
Counties had been able to easily manage the number of ballot styles using electronic voting machines, said Larimer County Clerk Scott Doyle.
“But that stuff’s all boat anchors now,” he said.
With paper ballots, some counties fear the sheer number of ballot styles will become too cumbersome to manage.
Lifting the precinct-reporting requirement would mean counties could have far fewer ballot styles. That in turn would make managing the paper ballots easier, especially for counties like Larimer, which prefer using aggregated vote centers where anybody in the county can vote as opposed to small precinct polling places.
“That’s necessary for us to hold an election,” said Doyle, who is among the clerks working with legislators on the election plan. “It’s that critical.”
Doyle and other clerks met with legislators and representatives from the governor’s and secretary of state’s offices Friday.
Many clerks — though not those from some of the state’s largest counties — favor an all mail-ballot election and thought their input was not heeded in the governor’s plan. Some clerks blasted the paper-ballot decision as portending disaster.
Evan Dreyer, Ritter’s spokesman, said Friday’s meetings were intended to assuage some of the clerks’ concerns.
“We need to all be moving ahead together,” Dreyer said. “It’s not productive for the type of rhetoric that is continuing around this issue to persist.”
Gordon said he plans to introduce the elections bill this week. Rep. David Balmer, a Centennial Republican who is also working on the bill, said he expects it to see strong support.
John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com
