Election Judge Describes Task Of Ballot Counting In Denver

DENVER (CBS4) - Workers looked a bit bleary eyed, but were at it again Wednesday in Denver, processing ballots. There were still expected to be about 100,000 ballots to go through.

"That came in through drop boxes, that came in though vote centers and that are coming from overseas," explained clerk and recorder Paul Lopez. When the ballots come in the signatures are checked and then separated. "We give it a unique ID, and then that's what we use later for the audit and then it goes on to be scanned and counted."

Bi-partisan workers watch the process. Kay Coulson worked as an election judge because she wanted to be helpful and see how things were processed.

"I thought it was a good year to try it and help because I thought a lot of older people typically volunteer. Maybe they wouldn't want to do it because of COVID, and I was concerned on whether mail-in ballots were really secure, and if everything was safe and I thought the best way to do it was to be here at the headquarters."

Coulson worked for more than two weeks helping ensure there were no shenanigans.

"And so we're making sure our teams are in two or three, and they're all bi-partisan and one of the things we ask the teams is, don't talk politics when you're here."

In Jefferson County the people counting ballots Wednesday were similarly bi-partisan, but the crew was much smaller. JeffCo had counted all of the ballots it received Tuesday before going home, but there were still somewhere better than a thousand clerk George Stern figured.

"Military and overseas voters, voters with signature issues, voters with ballots were delivered to the wrong county by them in a drop or by mail have up to nine days after the election to come back to us."

The counties had a "ballot swap" on Wednesday morning in Denver, where the clerks offices showed up with ballots for other counties that had ended up in their drop boxes on time, but in the wrong place. JeffCo got some from Denver.

"Denver time stamps it for us to make sure it was in by 7 p.m., then delivers it to us the next day for us to process," he explained.

After the unofficial count in completed, there will be an audit of ballots, conducted by pulling ballots by randomly selected number. The ballots are then studied by human eyes, to verify machine counting was accurate.

Before Thanksgiving, the counties will bring in party representatives to go over counts.

"They're looking at all the numbers. They're making sure the number of ballots received matches the number counted, we didn't lose any ballots."

Then the party representatives sign off on them as well as the clerks and the official counts go in.

CBS4 asked Kay Coulson if she'd seen anything improper while she worked at the Denver Clerk's office. She had detected what appeared to be someone voting twice.

"I caught one. One person that clearly had voted twice, you could tell from the handwriting and all, but we're looking at them and we're catching that and it didn't go forward."

She said she had seen no voting after the deadline.

"I really don't see that happening."

Her concerns about voting integrity were laid to rest.

"Completely… Yeah I really thought, before I voted in Denver dropped my ballot in a drop box and didn't really understand what happened. The ballots don't go 20 yards without some check-in or check out mechanism to make sure that everything is counted and everything is safe."

She hopes others will do the same thing she did to learn about the process.

"I think Denver has a process that is really respected. And so what I say to other people is, more Republicans should volunteer to feel confident. I feel like going through this process that everyone should, this should be obligatory."