Colorado county clerks are calling for redacted versions of ballot images and cast vote records to be available to the public free of charge, one of a handful of changes local election officials recommend to improve elections in the state.

The recommendations come from the Colorado County Clerks Association and were submitted in a letter to the Colorado Secretary of State’s Bipartisan Advisory Committee. The clerks stressed throughout their letter that they feel Colorado’s elections are among the best-administered in the country.

Still, they highlighted four areas for improvement, including publishing ballot images in a way that preserves voter anonymity.

“Thanks to our best-in-the-nation Risk Limiting Audit, Colorado is able to push back on disinformation and provide statistical evidence that our voting systems count votes accurately,” CCCA said in the letter. “However, citizens should also be able to verify election outcomes on their own, and they should not have to pay the government to do.”

CCCA warned that the redaction process to successfully publish ballot images while protecting voter anonymity is “very staff intensive and expensive” and many counties likely wouldn’t be able to provide the service for free without changes to the process.

Aside from that proposal, the clerks also called for:

• Enhancements to the signature verification audit process, including codifying the process in state law in an effort to boost uniformity across the state
• An audit process for voter rolls that validates third party data from government agencies such as the Social Security Administration, the state Department of Public Health and Environment and the state Revenue Department
• A funding boost for those administering elections at the local level

County clerks told the advisory committee in the letter released Tuesday that the current level of funding “does not come close to meeting actual costs and supporting enhancements and innovations necessary to continue improving our processes.

“In 2020, some jurisdictions here in Colorado and many across the country relied on funding from nonprofit grants because they did not have the funding to ensure their elections have the necessary access and security,” the clerks said in the letter. “The state of Colorado needs to modernize its reimbursement rates to cover increasing costs and unfunded state statutory mandates.”

Carly Koppes, CCCA’s president and the Weld County clerk, in a statement said the recommendations seek to “build on our successes with initiatives that will further strengthen our elections and enhance the transparency and integrity of our processes.”

“Each of these initiatives is based on our expertise with current law and is designed to improve Colorado’s election model,” she said. “These initiatives will also help combat the mis, dis, and malinformation – or MDM – that has so damaged public confidence in our elections.”