DENVER—Two years ago, polling troubles left thousands of Coloradans unable to vote. Some waited past midnight to do so, and Secretary of State Mike Coffman said Colorado had the dubious distinction of being one the last states in the country in which voters cast their ballots.
This year, Colorado had the ingredients for a sequel:
—Voting machines decertified, then recertified, by Coffman.
—A new, federally mandated voting registration database, known as SCORE, to check in voters at the polls.
—A lawsuit against the state by voting watchdog groups that claimed an estimated 27,000 voters were illegally purged from the rolls less than 90 days before the election. Under an agreement, any of those voters who showed up Tuesday were allowed to cast provisional ballots.
—About 3,000 new voters who failed to check a box indicating they didn’t have a driver’s license or state ID could only cast provisional ballots.
In the end, the sequel didn’t happen, though record numbers of mail-in ballots helped contribute to a lengthy vote count that stretched into Wednesday.
“I’m incredibly proud of the jobs that the county clerks did around Colorado,” said Coffman, who was elected Tuesday to the congressional seat being vacated by Republican Tom Tancredo.
“I think that the experience of 2006 helped make this state well prepared for the challenges of 2008,” Coffman said.
Colorado Common Cause, one of the groups that sued the state, and another watchdog group, Election Protection, said they received about 800 calls from Colorado voters, mostly about registration questions.
“Compared to 2006, Colorado is doing fabulously,” said Jenny Flanagan, executive director of Common Cause.
Flanagan said there were some hiccups, such as provisional ballots being given out “wholesale” in some counties, including Arapahoe and Denver, at the first sign of trouble with a voter’s registration.
“I don’t know if election judges are overwhelmed or if it’s a training issue, but it’s something we’re going to be looking at in the coming days,” she said.
A majority of registered voters cast their ballots before Election Day. And even an expected last-minute rush of voters didn’t happen.
“Boy, the last hour of voting was very, very quiet. I was stunned,” said Douglas County Clerk and Recorder Jack Arrowsmith.
“It has gone much better than 2006,” said Denver elections spokesman Alton Dillard, harkening back to a year when Denver used vote centers where anyone could go to cast a ballot, instead of designated precincts. A malfunction with the electronic poll book triggered long wait times that year.
Denver switched to relying mainly on paper ballots rather than electronic voting machines, allowing the city to offer more polling booths.
Few problems were reported in Douglas County, which along with Denver was put on a “watch list” by Coffman’s office after their disastrous 2006 elections. Douglas County underestimated the number of voting machines it needed that year.
