Colorado, El Paso County and Colorado Springs have some of the most secure election procedures in place in the nation, but that didn't stop people from questioning, during an online election forum March 25, whether voting machines can be hacked. The election security panel was presented by the Indy and its sister publications, the Colorado Springs Business Journal and the Southeast Express.
Secretary of State Jena Griswold, Colorado Springs City Clerk Sarah Johnson and Mattie Gullixson, project manager with the National Cybersecurity Center, outlined election procedures in Colorado, calling them the "gold standard" for fair and secure elections.
"When you vote in an election that we oversee in the Secretary of State's office, you're voting on a piece of paper," Griswold said. "You can actually see it, feel it. A piece of paper can't be hacked. It allows us to have a high level of certainty ... to know our election results are correct."
She noted it's not just her touting the virtues of her office, Colorado has been called the model for voting, notably the state's mail system, which drew criticism and suspicion from Donald Trump supporters as not free from fraud.
Johnson said there's always concern about fraud in elections, and there should be, but given all the checks and balances in place, people can be assured the outcome as reported by her office are accurate.
For example, this year when mailing out the April 6 election ballots, an error occurred in which 2,500 people got two ballots, not one. Because of voter management methods in place, "I know exactly who those 2,500 people are and our database is watching when those ballots come back. We're making sure there's only one vote per person. We are tracking every single ballot this office sends out."
Johnson noted that software compares voter signatures, required on the outside of the ballot envelope, with signatures of that voter on record. If a signature is questionable, then humans step in to determine whether to verify the ballot as valid.
"We've been verifying signatures since 2007," she said. "We were the only municipality in the state to go all-mail ballot" at that time.
Johnson also said vote processing is monitored 24/7 by surveillance cameras.
Gullixson said the next big challenge is finding a way for overseas voters, including military members, to send in their ballots in a timely fashion. Various organizations are testing electronic voting, or by fax, as well as continuing mail balloting, though the timeliness of the latter depends on movement of the mail from other countries to the United States.
One key provision in Colorado that enables safe and fair elections is a statewide voter registration roll that makes it nearly impossible for a voter to cast ballots in multiple counties, Griswold said. A move that expanded voter access was online voter registration, which still is not allowed in many states across the country.
Last year, the state rolled out a new electronic feature in 13 counties that enabled individual voters to track ballots from the time they mailed them or dropped them in a drop box through having them counted.
Moreover, Griswold said her office conducts random counts to assure a high level of confidence and reinforce accuracy.
Dominion Voting Systems, which has been accused of everything from importing votes from other countries to rigging counting machines, lies at the heart of millions of Americans who believe Trump's claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. Dominion has filed several multi-billion-dollar lawsuits against those who have alleged what the company calls complete falsehoods.
Griswold said 62 of 64 counties in Colorado, including El Paso County, use Dominion equipment, but insisted, "You can't hack the elections in Colorado."
In 2020, her office set up a new unit to push out accurate information to voters to counter false information being spread disgruntled voters and foreign governments.
"We really urge voters to go to trusted sources of information," she said, "so that you know the good information. We want all Coloradans to know their rights and to know how safe and secure our elections are."
That didn't stop some who tuned in to the forum from raising questions.
"I do not trust any voting machines being used in the USA. Your claims of misinformation do not address the facts regarding how easy it has been demonstrated that Dominion and other machines can be hacked," a viewer under the name Rich wrote in viewer comments. "Dominion and other voting machines have what’s called a weighted race feature. So they can change your vote to a fraction instead of 1 vote. Doesn’t that make these voting machines unconstitutional? "
By the time that question was raised, Griswold had left the forum for another engagement, but Johnson and Gullixson said they were unaware of any such method of counting votes.
Although the city doesn't use Dominion equipment, Johnson said in her 20-plus years running elections, "I’ve never heard of that.... A vote is a vote. It’s not fractionalized in any way."
On April 6, voters will choose City Council members in six geographic districts and vote on a ballot measure that would lift the 30-word limit required of a ballot title.
Editor's note: Find interviews with 20 City Council candidates at csindy.com/news/elections. District 6 incumbent Mike O'Malley did not respond to the Indy's requests for an interview.