DENVER—Denver hopes to avoid the long lines that plagued the 2006 election by more than doubling the number of voting booths offered on Election Day.
The move is possible because the city shifted from using mostly electronic voting machines to paper ballots counted by scanners.
In 2006, voters had to wait to check in and then cast their ballots on one of 1,200 electronic voting machines. This year there will be 2,700 voting booths where they can mark their four-page paper ballots. There also will be at least one electronic voting machine in each polling location for voters who want to use those.
“I don’t anticipate unreasonable lines at all,” elections director Michael Scarpello said Tuesday during another round of testing of Sequoia ballot scanners and touchscreen voting machines.
While voting on paper may speed up lines, it could delay elections results because paper ballots have to be taken to election headquarters. There, they’ll be scanned on nine large optical scanners.
Scarpello said results could be delayed until early Nov. 5. He said it depends on how many people wait until Election Day to drop off their mail-in ballots at polling locations, something he said isn’t usually allowed in other counties, and whether most people vote in the morning or later in the day.
Scarpello said workers will pick up ballots from polling locations three times during the day to try to speed up the count.
The state’s 64 counties are required to have at least one electronic voting machine available to voters under a law passed following problems caused by punch-card systems in the 2000 election. Concerns about the accuracy of computerized voting machines led Colorado lawmakers to consider switching to paper ballots for this year’s presidential election. They faced opposition from county clerks, and the secretary of state ended up recertifying machines he had previously ruled were insecure or inaccurate as long changes were made to the machines. Lawmakers ultimately decided to leave the decision to individual counties.
Many counties planning to use mostly electronic voting machines are on the eastern plains. But at least two large counties, Arapahoe and Weld, also say they’ll primarily rely on them.
