County clerks have transformed their offices over the past decade, making their myriad records available digitally and online.
That’s one of the reasons we side with them in the debate over paper ballots. The great majority of Colorado’s clerks trust electronic voting machines and want to continue using them.
They do so despite a recommendation by the state’s Election Reform Commission that clerks do away with so-called e-voting and shift to an all-paper ballot system by 2014.
By the way, 2014 is firmly planted in the 21st century — a century that has been defined by our use of computers and rejection of analog for digital in many critical areas of our daily lives.
Simply put, the digital-information age has made things much simpler than those days of sorting through paper and microfilm.
The 21st century ought to be able to make a reliable electronic voting machine with a paper backup.
In 2007, we offered support to a temporary legislative measure to use an all-paper ballot for the August primary and November general election.
Voters were skeptical about the machines. The dark memories of the contested presidential election of 2000, and again in some quarters in 2004, remained vivid and hurtful.
County clerks argued that their electronic voting machines were reliable and would be too costly to abandon. Lawmakers dropped the measure when told they would need to spend $11 million to help counties shift to all-paper ballot systems.
Last year, then-Secretary of State Mike Coffman (now a congressman) decertified electronic voting machines.
In the months-long process to restore confidence in the voting process, lawmakers passed a one-year fix that allows county clerks to continue using their machines.
If lawmakers don’t recertify the machines this session, clerks will be stuck with machines they can’t use.
Which brings us back to the Election Reform Commission. Presently there is no bill before the legislature that would recertify the machines. The commission has suggested a bill that ties certification to a requirement that counties shift to all-paper ballots by 2014.
Not every member of the commission agrees, and critics say that such a move would be “ramrodding” a mandate by threatening clerks with decertification.
We trust the clerks on this. Lawmakers should recertify their machines, and allow them the autonomy they need to work with their unique geographies and populations moving forward.
