Colorado’s election system went through the Whac-a-Mole game again Monday, when opponents took turns hammering a bill backed by legislative leaders and the governor that would mandate primarily paper-ballot elections this year.
At the bill’s first hearing before a Senate committee, Secretary of State Mike Coffman said it doesn’t provide nearly enough money to the state’s counties to cover added election costs from such a system.
About a dozen county clerks and officials said the bill is unnecessary because Coffman has recertified most of the voting machines he earlier decertified.
“I believe this is a very expensive solution to a problem that no longer exists,” said Eagle County Clerk Teak Simonton.
Voting activists who support the bill said they don’t think it goes far enough in creating rigorous post-election audit standards or allowing for public scrutiny of vote counting.
And an attorney on the lawsuit that led Coffman to decertify the machines wouldn’t rule out the possibility of another lawsuit over the state’s election system.
“We think this is a critical step in the right direction,” attorney Paul Hultin said of the bill. “We would prefer very much not to be filing another lawsuit.”
In the end, the Senate’s state affairs committee delayed voting on the bill until Wednesday, in part because legislative analysts have yet to come up with an estimated price tag.
The bill provides for $3.5 million to be spread around the state’s 64 counties to cover election costs associated with going to paper. But Nancy Amick, the Rio Blanco County Clerk and the president of the Colorado County Clerks Association, said counties now estimate they will need as much as $15 million to buy paper ballots, pay for postage, hire additional election judges and possibly purchase more ballot-counting machines.
Coffman said the costs probably don’t qualify for federal elections funds.
“I believe it is not fiscally sound,” he said. “It mandates additional costs on counties, and it sets up the false expectation that those costs will be paid by the state.”
Sen. Ken Gordon, a Denver Democrat who helped craft the bill and is co-sponsoring it, defended the plan. He said it minimizes the reliance on electronic voting machines, which the decertifications called into question, while also making concessions to help the clerks.
“What we’ve been trying to do is work something out that will result in a good and fair election and will minimize the difficulties that the clerks will have in running these elections,” he said.
The clerks, who said they trust their e-voting machines, questioned why they can’t use them in a full-scale way and blamed a small minority of people for dictating the paper-ballot decision.
“The idea that there’s a wide movement for paper ballots is simply not true,” Arapahoe County Clerk Nancy Doty said.
Voting activists disagreed.
“There is a scientific consensus that this technology is deeply flawed, unreliable and unsecured,” Hultin said.
Denver’s Stephanie O’Malley was the only clerk to speak in favor of the bill, which mirrors Denver’s plan to hold a mostly paper-ballot election this year to avoid problems created in the past when technology failed at polling places.
John Ingold: 303-954-1068 or jingold@denverpost.com
