The Colorado primaries are just a few weeks away; ballots will be mailed June 6 and the election is June 28. Voting is a democratic right as a U.S. citizen and the first step is registering to vote and feeling confident in the voting process.El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Chuck Broerman said, ìSince the presidential election, there has been considerable disinformation and misinformation around the voting process.î He said El Paso Countyís bipartisan election judges go through background checks, all the vote tabulating areas are secured with cameras and cyber locks to protect them, and the election equipment is not connected to the internet. ìCan I stress that another time Ö it is not connected to the internet, it is not connected to Wi-Fi, it is not connected to Bluetooth,î Broerman said. ìPeople continue to put that out there ó and it is patently false.îTheir equipment is tested by a federal lab, he said. The standard is to not have more than one misread per half-million ballots; the lab tested 2 million cycles and found no errors, Broerman said. They also perform an audit of their equipment before the election; plus, a forensic style audit checks that the equipment and procedures used to count votes during an election worked properly†and that the election yielded the correct outcome after the election, he said.The El Paso County Election Department has taken extra steps to satisfy and gain votersí confidence by providing images of the ballots available, recording how the tabulator reads the ballots and creating an audit tool for citizens to go online and look at each ballot in their precinct and in their senate district, Broerman said.A third-party is also contracted to tabulate the ballots again, he said. ìAll of that has come up matching,î Broerman said. ìOut of the 3,104 counties in the country, we have done the extra for our citizens here in El Paso County, so they can have confidence in voting.îHe said one of the comments they often hear from voters is that they think the office should do a hand count instead of using a tabulator. They received 383,204 ballots during the presidential elections. ìHand counting that number of ballots would equal counting 1.2 million contests, which would take us about four to five weeks to finalize,î Broerman said. ìHand counting has also been demonstrated to have a 2% inaccuracy rate; when there is a close race, a 2% error rate is not acceptable.î The cost of hand counting for the presidential election alone would have equaled about $500,000, compared to a tabulator, which can count the same amount accurately time after time at pennies per ballot, he said.El Paso County had a lower voter turnout than the other counties along the front range during the last coordinated election, Broerman said. ìI hope it isnít because the lies and misconceptions that are out there are undercutting confidences and keeping people away from voting,î he said. El Paso County is the largest county in the state at present. ìIf we sit on the sidelines and not vote because we believe misinformation, it is our county that is going to hurt because our voices wonít be heard in Denver,î Broerman said.He encouraged voters to go to trusted sources or to the county to get their questions answered and the information they need to feel confident when they vote.According to the El Paso County Clerk and Recorder voter registration website, all ballots must be returned to their office by 7 p.m. on June 28 (postmarks do not count). The site also recommends people return their ballot early via one of 38 secure ballot drop boxes in the county.To update a voter registration or register to vote, visit†https://govotecolorado.gov.
