Dem Woman On Facebook Asks For Unused Ballots

On a slightly related note, I got to tour the County Clerk's office last week for my last Leadership Evergreen class (you can too - just call and set up an appointment, it's cool as hell!). Pam Anderson the Jeffco County Clerk gave us the tour of where the ballots are verified for signature match, sorted and counted, opened to be scanned, kept secure, the Chain of Custody involved on the voting machines, the whole nine yards. It was an impressive operation, very efficient, very organized, and very controlled. (On a side note, touring the county jail is a hoot too - schedule that as well, takes about 4 hours to see the whole thing according to Sheriff Mink . You can take kids as long as they are at least 13 years old - mine are definitely going when they get older. The maximum security inmates like the alleviation in boredom with guests to "entertain").

She mentioned that of all the tens of thousands of ballots that Jeffco residents turned in during the last presidential election, only two were referred to the County DA's office to have a "perky" conversation with them about voter fraud. There's no forging signatures on that many ballots that this woman could get past their people and machines - they check signatures on file back decades if it's in question because people's signatures can and do change over time, or with certain circumstances like car accidents that impair motor coordination or strokes that hamper writing ability, and they don't want to discount a legitimate ballot at all. And yes, she'd be having a "perky" conversation with the DA for it.

Yup, it was a pleasure - she's amazingly knowledgeable and quite obviously cares very deeply about her job to provide what is a fundamental Constitutional right to every citizen in the county. She's term limited so someone else will have her job come next year, I only hope they are as well-versed in the functioning of that dept as she is (I have heard a rumor of who might run, but I can't say here now). We're in very capable hands.

And yes, I'd love to meet the other Pam Anderson too - she'd be a hoot to question for an hour!

I forgot to mention, if you look on your ballot envelopes, there's a bar code on the back - yes, that is keyed to you specifically. If you and your spouse accidentally sign each others envelopes (kinda hard considering that your name is printed right below, but it can happen), it will trigger an error that the signature doesn't match who was supposed to be returning that envelope and they will contact you to straighten it out. Likewise, don't mail both yours and your spouse's ballots back in one envelope - they need the signature of each.

The most common "fraud" that they encounter is older people who forget that they've already voted and request a new ballot to be mailed. Yes, that is still a case for contacting the person with duplicate ballots, but they don't prosecute if there's no malice of intent.

Each person is allowed up to 3 ballots. If you screw up voting, or lose it, you can get another two chances. The counting machine when it scans the ballots will kick any back that have marks for multiple candidates and if it's obvious that you scratched out one and circled another with big arrows pointing to it, the human reviewers will note that and get it counted the way you wanted.

It says right on the ballot secrecy sleeve that if you sign more than one envelope, it may cause your ballot to not be counted, so this lady definitely couldn't get away with voting for others unless she also had them sign the envelopes too. If that happens, it wouldn't surprise me if they could go after the person who gave away their signed ballot as committing election fraud as well - that's like selling your vote and rigging the election. Personally, if it's not a crime, I think they should at the very least lose the right to vote as they obviously don't care about truthful democratic process.

Something that's really cool is that the county can now automatically update your address, so if you move and register your new address when renewing your license, they can pull that record from the DMV and apply it to your voter registration, making it less likely for voter fraud to occur with people voting in multiple counties.