♪ >> Hi, everyone.

Welcome to the special edition of "Colorado Inside Out" here on the beautiful University of Colorado campus.

Tonight we're looking at what happens to your ballot when you turn it in.

We're letting you see the election process from some of our experts here in Colorado.

I'm very excited for us all to learn tonight.

Let me introduce Amber McReynolds.

The national administration expert, serving as director of elections for the city and county of Denver.

Then we have Amber Dillard who is a former election spokesperson for the city of Denver.

Then we have Molly Fitzpatrick, President of the Colorado county clerk's association.

Then we have Carly Coppess, and then we have Doug Spencer.

This will be the most scrutinized election in modern history in this country.

And our experts will all say it is also going to be the safest election that we have had in Colorado to explain that thinking, for this show we're going to talk about the life of a Colorado ballot.

Let's start where it all begins with registering to vote.

It used to be, at least in Denver county, you had to go to the clerk of reporters office between 9:00 and 5:00, and you had to register a month before election day.

It's so much easier now.

>> That's right, it is far more convenient now.

And we also, in Colorado, you know the system has been designed to leverage new technologies that emerged over the last 20 years to automate the process so if you go to the motor vehicle location, you can register to vote there as long as you meet the criteria.

Instead of multiple forms, it happens in one transaction.

That is important for convenience, safeguarding the system, and making sure the addresses are accurate.

>> When we talk about the ease, some people will argue it is too easy to register to vote in Colorado, and that people that don't live here permanently are registering.

Voters have to affirm to certain qualifications, they will be 18 on or before election day, a U.S. citizen, and a resident of Colorado for 22 days.

On top of that we use a variety of databases to check against our voter registration system to ensure that only eligible voters are voting.

I would say our system is actually very modern because we can still create ease in registration while ensuring that eligible voters are casting a ballot.

So while registration is happening, there is work being done behind the scenes in terms of getting these ballots ready.

Let's talk about Well County.

>> The reason is how many municipalities, school districts, and the exorbitant amount of districts we have.

>> It is the most complicated to administer?

Or once a voter is it straightforward -- >> It is most complicated for us to administer because we have to make sure that you're getting what you're eligible for and your neighbor across the street who could be different is actually getting what they're eligible for.

So when laying out that bat lot and we have over 1,000 ballot styles, and we have to lay out every single one of those and make sure it is correct and then do all of the verification aspects of it in a short time frame, a very, very short timeframe, to make sure you have the correct election, we want to make sure you have everything you're supposed to have on your ballot.

>> The ballot boxes that are so popular in Colorado, what work is being done to make sure they're ready to go?

>> Those ballot drop boxes are under 24 hour video surveillance.

We make sure it is working and operating, and on top of that those ballot drop boxes are emptied by bipartisan teams of election judges going to the box, emptying out, did demonstrating chain of custody, that they took receipt of the contents of that box and brought it back to the ballot processing centers.

>> So there is a chain of command from ballot box to the office.

>> That's correct.

>> Including, you know, forms, paperwork filled out, and as mentioned the bipartisan teams, one of the things from the communication standpoint that we always emphasize.

So regardless of what the partisan balance of your county looks like, these are bipartisan processes.

>> You know, I remember when I first moved here you had to ask ahead of time to get a ballot mailed to you.

Why did we make the changes and why was it so important for Colorado to make it accessible and for many other states still using the old way of doing things.

>> Colorado, 20 or 15 years ago, we spent a lot of time in the election office processing pieces of paper, voter registration forms, or absentee ballot applications at the time.

By 2012 almost 80% voted by mail in the 2012 presidential election.

And the remaining were calling the election offices saying my friend, my neighbor, got a mail in ballot, where is mine?

And Colorado was demanding a change to make things more convenient.

So the law was designed to proactively mail a ballot to all active voters eligible to vote, and eligible to receive that ballot, while also automating address updates through the United States postal service change of address database, and also modernizing the in-person voting process, and also implementing drop boxes and different methods to return ballots.

>> And in 2006, things must have started in Denver because there was a lot of problems that year.

That's when it was governor Rarer that won the election.

>> Yeah, there was a technical failure that resulted in 20,000 people getting turned away and it created a change in governance.

Until January of 2007, Denver had an election commission where the clerk and recorder was a mayorial appointee and then we had two elected commissioners.

It was a part time job.

One was a CPA, one was a realtor.

There was such an outcry that this can never happen again, that A, changes were made, but also, our local law and state in Denver, you get the resources to execute successful elections.

>> Let's talk about ballot tracking which we have here in Colorado, which is a great resource.

You have some ballot tracking that was actually pioneered in Denver, Colorado in 2009.

And it is designed to allow voters to sign up to get text or e-mail notifications about their ballot all of the way through the postal system.

Once the clerks receive it, all of those aspects, and it didn't require a lot of change.

It is just an enhancement in technology that benefitted the voters in various ways and now more than 120 million people nationwide have access to use this technology.

>> And it's a great way for us on our side, on the administrative side, to know when a voter calls "hey, where is my ballot," we're able to see it as well and say it is at Denver GMF, and now the next post office.

It is a good added measure.

Say someone was stealing ballots.

They would get a notification it was turned into the office and signature verified, and voters can I I never turn it'd in, I'm getting a message it is turned in, signature verified, and we never had reports of that.

So that can give voters confidence that that is not happening in Colorado.

>> Compared to when you first started teaching election law, is there more interest among students or people wanting to go into this facet of law?

>> Absolutely, I started teaming in 2013 and I had 12 students teaching election law class and then in 2020 I was teaching my election law class at Yale law school that admitted about 200 law students a year and I had 120 people enrolled, and there was a wait list.

They had no idea who I was, and I teach election law this year at CU, and there is 85 students in the class.

There is a huge demand for learning about this area of law and practicing in this area.

>> What are you expecting?

I'll ask the clerks, on November the 5th?

>> Well, for our county we traditionally for presidential elections have an extremely high turnout.

For us, we're very early adopter of the mail in ballot.

Our voters still really participate in that.

We're going to see quite a bit on this coming week and on November 5th we're probably going to see a big rush after 5:00 p.m. is usually what we intend to see for people coming in to vote in person.

We're probably going to see a higher turnout of mail in ballots being dropped more.

>> Especially if you have a complicated ballot, it is easier to fill it out at home.

It takes awhile to do in election day in person.

>> We tested that out because we need to warn our judges about someone to use a ballot marking device.

If they're prepared, it will be 30 to 45 minutes, and if they're unprepared it is an hour to an hour 30.

>> What happens at 7:00?

There is mail in ballots, where are they sitting until we start counting and verifying signatures and everything like that?

>> Our election judges are closing the 24 hour drop boxes at 7:00 p.m.

They're bringing those ballots back to our ballot processing operation, and that's when the polls close at 7:00 p.m., and our election judges are making sure that anyone in line will vote, and once everything is back in our ballot processing operation, it goes through multiple steps to verify identity, to ensure that it is opened properly to ensure that voter information is not compromised, and that we're preserving anonymity, and there is so many steps baked in and that demonstrates accuracy and integrity, and it demonstrates the exact thing of oh, there is problems and it is taking so long, it is the exact reason that it is actually demonstrating accuracy.

>> And there is a lot of steps you said, to monitor -- we heard about bipartisanship before, are there cameras in the centers like we have seen in Pennsylvania?

What does it like like on that night?

Is it chaotic and fun?

>> No, we're getting lots of ballots back and we have cameras on our operations 24/7 and on top of that, we have bipartisan teams of election judges and this process is okay, you snow people can sign up to be a watcher through their political party or a ballot measure campaign and come and observe key parts of the election's process.

And that is a really important thing that is true in Colorado and across the country as well.

There are transparency requirements in every state.

>> Is there someone keeping an eye on the election watchers that they're not going where they shouldn't be?

>> Sometimes we have watcher monitors or wranglers or whatever other counties call them.

We have them have one point of contact for every single process they're watching.

And if they get a little out of line, we do have the ability to have a conversation with them and polite I will ask them to leave if necessary.

>> And the watchers go through a training, there is guidelines, and a training, and they can watch that so they understand what the election rules are.

Because of all of the things in place, you know, in a bipartisan way, it surprises to many of us that all of the bad info can be in the public domain because all of the checks and balances exist as part of that legal structure that ensures that elections are fair and secure and accurate throughout.

>> I was in the U.S. Senate, as a staffer during Bush V Gore, and that was a different sort of dynamic in society.

That was more of a panic.

There was no misinformation, or accusations of fraud and everything that we have to deal with these days.

So that is why the tours, and even if they're not large tours, it is that each one teach one.

Check in with your county clerk and recorder.

They have nothing to hide.

They will show you around.

Then they're like oh, okay, I didn't know this worked like that.

Or I didn't know this is what preserves the privacy of my mail in ballot, and it's just a matter of keeping people informed in a time in our society where there may not be a lot of interest in being informed.

>> Some of this is so important not just for educating people and making sure that we can verify this after the fact, but if you go back to the litigation after 2020, there was 60-some odd lawsuits filed after the election, and they did not have hard evidence gathered in realtime.

You're not allowed to provide hearsay, somebody said they saw this.

You have to have documented evidence at the time that something is happening, a poll watcher creates that, a tour creates that, an allegation later, and you can say in realtime we have a record this was not happening, and trying to gather it after the election forensically, it doesn't hold up in law.

Gathering this in realtime, poll watchers can call hotlines and report things.

They have their own chain of command, voter wills call, those records are really important for the litigation that is almost inevitable as much as, I think, helping people feel good about the outcome.

>> There are voter integrity organizations.

The longest non-partisan group, 1-866-our-vote.

It's a national hotline.

If you look at the amount of reports concerned by voters, I think some 30,000 complaints were filed in 2018, and 250,000 in 2020, and people are aware of this and they can get feedback from election lawyers and officials that say that is not okay, or they say this is part of the process.

It may feel weird to you, but hopefully you can calm down any dispute that has risen.

>> What is the climate like?

Is everything going okay right now in terms of inquiries, allegations?

>> It is a hard moment to be an election official, no doubt about that.

The staff is facing horrible comments and threats to the election officials, but it is heads down right now.

I think our role is to block out the noise so the election officials can do and the staff can do their job of implementing this election.

They're not interested in who is winning, they want the process to be airtight and we believe at this moment in time, it demands the transparency into our operations.

I can say we're doing double the amount of tours we have ever done, and that is a reflection of what we saw needed in 2022, we're adding law enforcement to the tours because we're bringing in dozens and dozens of people into our operations and we need people to feel safe to do the nuts and bolts of the election administration.

>> Elections were deemed critical infrastructure in 2017 post the 2016 presidential.

So election infrastructure had never been deemed with that high level from a national security perspective.

This is our nation's critical infrastructure and similarly the United States postal service, which plays a major role in delivering the materials is part of the nation's critical infrastructure.

So what I think people often forget is how highly scrutinized, how large this infrastructure is, it is not just local election officers, there is state officers, there is postal service, there is the political parties, and it is a very wide array of institutions that are involved.

>> We're talking about computers, and there are places that are not trusting and thinking computers are the way to go and some doing hand counting.

>> We have passion, strategize, ethics, and the one thing we're terrible at is counting small things other and other and other again accurately.

So to move away from that of all of the things in the apparatus of running an election, to have humans be in charge of that task, to me, seems completely irresponsible.

>> It induces risk.

>> And it's not -- these systems are not connected to the internet.

They're isolated in a gap network where you're scanning a piece of paper.

Every ballot cast, the official record is a piece of paper, a hand-marked ballot, or a paper ballot produced by an accessible device, but nothing is connected to outside systems.

So they have security systems and it's also like, I think something that that is often misunderstood in the public domain and it is really important for people to understand.

>> The last two processes are audit and certification or the other way around?

>> Audit and then certification.

>> When does that all happen.

>> The audit happens before you certify the results.

That's the process where election judges appointed by the political parties are comparing the physical handmarked paper ballot that the voter fills out and the cast vote record.

And the cast vote record is the way that the voting system interpreted your ballot when it is scanned.

They're comparing those two things and if those two things are matching up, then we're passing the audit.

And what I would offer is that in 2020, and this will be true again in 2024, across the country more voters are voting on paper than in any other time in history.

More voters are in a state where more auditing is happening more than any other time in history.

Voters can rest assured this will be the most safe, secure election in modern history.

>> Okay, I want to ask to end the show, asking you all what can we do better in Colorado for elections, and what do we have going that is really good?

Down the line, Amber?

>> First, Colorado has become known for this incredible voter access system that was really designed to respond to what the voters wanted from their election process.

So I think that was magnificent.

I think the things, you know for Colorado, representation is still an area that we can work on.

And what I mean they be is Colorado voters passed independent redistricting which opened, again, added transparency into how district lines are drawn, and have more representation, and I still think we have great improvements to make on representation, and making sure that regardless of your party's affiliation, you can vote in every election, you can be a candidate in every election.

You can access the process in any way regardless of what your affiliation is.

We still struggle with this, and I hope that given now half of the voters in California are unaffiliated that we can continue to make improvements on that.

>> For me in will be the great communications and outreach, always telling the story of sub -- talking about the importance of reaching out to media and voters, and everyone looked at me like I had two heads.

Now the next thing you know, everyone has their information out on the website, they're doing tours, they're doing video, they're doing the whole nine yards.

They're getting boots on the ground, they're registering voters face to face in person.

Just seeing the engagement that Colorado's stellar model is driving, not only on the administration side, but on the voter facing side.

>> Molly?

>> I would offer that our strength is through the clerk's association.

We have a bipartisan clerk's association that supports counties of various sizes and various political demographics in different ways.

Communication is becoming more and more of a demand.

We have counties that certainly don't have a communications person.

They split right a half-time staff if they're lucky if as as association, we're willing to step in seeing here, let me help you communicate that, the network is strong in terms of what could be better.

I think this moment is hard for election officials and there is more scrutiny, more demand, clerks are doing more than less.

We want to push forward, there is things about giving election officials more time to build the ballot set up design test proof mail the ballot, so we have information about that on our website, and we also have different initiatives that we're going to keep pushing through the association that I will let Carly speak to.

>> One of the greatest thing Social Security that it has always been voter driven.

We always listen to the voters.

Our election model is fantastic.

We have always been pushing that envelope, and we will always be better.

They're doing more signature verification audits, making sure that we really get those stronger and doing voter registration audits and making sure that is working out better, and also making sure that with all of the initiatives, it is trying to get it all out for the public to review after the election as well.

We're really trying to work on those three aspects to continue to improve that trust, integrity, and elections that Colorado is so known for.

>> Okay, a voter and someone that studies elections professionally, I want to say thank you to our clerks and I hope you will pass that along as well.

It is an incredible amount of work.

Democracy is about representing the people and giving us a chance to have a voice, and the voting population is not always representative of everybody in your state.

One thing that is incredible about Colorado is that our electorate is more popular than any other state.

Our elections, our reforms that we have been able to institute, there is one thing they wish we could do better, it is that Colorado continues to come in number two or three in turnout.

Losing to Minnesota.

We may not be able to win this time Tim Walz is on the ballot, but I long to see the data Colorado is the number one turnout state in the union and I think that is within our reach.

>> That would be great, wouldn't it?

Do a happy dance.

Thank you for joining us and shedding light on this very complicated and important process.

Thank you very much.

Thank you everyone watching, thank you to our studio audience that came to the Mackie Auditorium.

And thank you to the university of Colorado for inviting us to this universal auditorium.

We appreciate it, and AARP Colorado that underwrited this special, important program so all of Colorado will know what happens when we turn in our ballots.

I'm Kyle Dyer, I'll see you next time here on PBS12.

Make sure to go out and be heard.

Thank you.

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