Inside the vote: A behind-the-scenes look at Denver’s ballot process
Behind the scenes at the Denver County Elections Division, ballots follow a carefully-monitored process from the moment they’re dropped into a ballot box to the final count. Colorado Politics had the opportunity to tour the Elections Division, guided by Marketing and Communications Specialist Ben Warwick, to see firsthand what happens to a ballot from the moment it’s turned in to the time it is finally tallied.
The tour is available to anyone interested, and people can sign up on the Denver Clerk and Recorder’s website or by clicking here.
1. Ballot security team members bring ballots to DED office
Ballot security teams, composed of two elections workers from different political parties, visit Denver’s 45 ballot drop boxes multiple times a day to collect ballots. Each team transfers the ballots into secured boxes, completes custody logs, documenting who handled the ballots and when, and transports the ballot boxes to the Elections Division Office. For added security, every container is sealed and locked during transport from ballot boxes.
2. The boxes are weighed to estimate the number of ballots inside
Once a box is brought into the Elections Division office, elections judges — identifiable by buttons showing their party affiliation (Democrat, Republican, or unaffiliated) — unlock and unseal them. The containers are then weighed to estimate the number of ballots inside. The ballots are taken out, organized onto trays, and sent to another group of judges, who ensure they’re all facing the same direction so they can be read by a mail sorting machine.
Since Colorado allows voters to drop ballots in any ballot box in the state, out-of-county ballots are set aside and express-shipped to the appropriate county.
3. Ballots are passed through the mail sorting machine
Each ballot undergoes a two-pass process through the sorting machine, Warwick explained. During the initial pass, the machine ensures each ballot is valid and takes a photo of the voter’s signature to send to signature verifiers. During the second pass, the machine opens the ballot envelopes. The machine processes about 14,000 ballots every hour, sorting them into trays.
4. Signatures are verified to make sure they’re accurate
A team of signature verification judges compares the images sent from the ballot sorting machine with the most recent signature the county has on file for each voter, typically from a driver’s license. Warwick says the signature verifiers go through “FBI-level” training to learn how to determine a signature’s legitimacy.
“You’re looking for kind of broad things — Do your s’s match? Do your big capital letters match? Do you have a j, or a y, or something that you do uniquely?” he says.
If a signature is determined to be invalid, it is set aside and voters are notified that they have until eight days after Election Day to remedy the issue, a process known as curing a ballot. Voters can cure their ballots via text through the Secretary of State’s TXT2Cure system.
5. Ballots are prepared for tabulation
After signature verification, the ballots are brought across the hall to be prepared for tabulation. For the first time since they were filled out by voters, the ballots are removed from their envelopes, ensuring complete anonymity.
“This is where the election really becomes a secret ballot because once the ballots are taken out of their envelopes, we have no idea how to match up a ballot with an envelope,” says Warwick. “Once those ballots are taken out of the envelope, it’s a secret ballot.”
The judges then examine the ballots to make sure there aren’t any stray marks or spills on them and confirm they were filled out with a black or blue pen.
6. Ballots move on to the tabulation room, where they’re counted by machines
Denver County, along with 62 of Colorado’s 64 counties, uses Dominion tabulation machines, which Warwick says are never at any point connected to the internet. In the tabulation room, ballots that were turned in electronically are duplicated onto tabulatable ballots by bipartisan election judges. On Election Day, election staff retrieves the results from the machines’ closed network and posts it to the internet.
The first unofficial results are posted at 7 p.m. on Election Day.
7. A risk-limiting audit is performed two weeks after Election Day
On Nov. 19, an audit board comprised of representatives from both the Democratic and Republican parties will oversee a risk-limiting audit in all Colorado counties. In this process, a random sample of ballots is selected based on the margin of the races and the risk limit set by the Secretary of State’s Office. A risk limit is the maximum chance that the audit will fail to detect any discrepancies in the election results. This election’s risk limit is 3%. The selected ballots are then compared to how the tabulation equipment originally counted them to verify their accuracy.
According to Warwick, the audit returns the same results as the election “10 out of 10 times.”
8. Election results are officially certified
On Nov. 22, Denver Elections will canvass and certify its election results, ensuring accuracy and completeness of the vote count. All counties are required to complete this process, which involves reviewing ballots and resolving any discrepancies, by Nov. 27.
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