{"id":50658,"date":"2020-11-03T14:29:22","date_gmt":"2020-11-03T21:29:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/more-than-2-7-million-coloradans-have-voted-heres-how-ballots-are-processed\/"},"modified":"2020-11-03T21:29:22","modified_gmt":"2020-11-03T21:29:22","slug":"more-than-2-7-million-coloradans-have-voted-heres-how-ballots-are-processed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/more-than-2-7-million-coloradans-have-voted-heres-how-ballots-are-processed\/","title":{"rendered":"More than 2.7 million Coloradans have voted. Here\u2019s how ballots are processed."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Scott
Scott Pugman, a mechanic for Mesa Verde National Park, drops off his ballot Tuesday in Cortez.<\/span>Jim Mimiaga\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Colorado can now add record early-voter turnout to the list of what\u2019s made 2020 a historic year.<\/p>\n

As of 5:10 p.m. Monday, more than 2.7 million Coloradans<\/a> had cast their ballots. That\u2019s just over two-thirds of registered voters, and hundreds of thousands more than had cast their ballots at the same point during the 2016 election.<\/p>\n

The vast majority of early voters have opted to vote via mail ballot or by dropbox, with only about 100,000 actually voting in person. This year marks the second presidential election where Colorado has sent mail ballots to every single registered voter.<\/p>\n

State law allows counties to start processing ballots 15 days before Election Day. This is helpful for mail-in voting, which requires that election judges verify a voter\u2019s identity based on a signature on the ballot\u2019s envelope. In-person voters also verify their identity by showing one of many forms of valid identification, including a driver\u2019s license or birth certificate.<\/p>\n

Each envelope has a unique barcode<\/a> linked to the voter\u2019s registration, which then links to previous signatures that the voter has written. These can come from previous ballots, voter registration documents or even signing to get a driver\u2019s license.<\/p>\n

Should the signature on the envelope not match any previous signatures on file, a bipartisan pair of election judges \u2014 one Democrat, one Republican \u2014 will team up and discuss if the signature is valid to move on.<\/p>\n

If they disagree, the voter gets the benefit of the doubt and the ballot continues to the next step. But if both judges think the signature might not match up with other ones, then the envelope is set aside and the voter is notified via mail that they must cure, or fix, their ballot. This means the voter has to verify their identity again for their ballot to continue on.<\/p>\n

New for this election, the state rolled out the TXT2Cure system, where a voter can text in with a signature and pictures of identification documents to verify that their ballot is indeed valid.<\/p>\n

Once a signature has been validated, the ballot finally gets removed from its envelope and thus separated from the voter\u2019s identity. The ballot then joins the stacks of in-person ballots, which have also been separated from their privacy sleeves, and they are all counted together.<\/p>\n

Should the tabulation machine struggle to read someone\u2019s vote \u2014 maybe the voter made a mistake and tried to correct it, or used something other than a blue or black pen to fill in the bubbles \u2014 then another team of bipartisan judges examines the ballot to determine the voter\u2019s intent and log it accordingly.<\/p>\n

Throughout the whole process, ballots are under 24-hour surveillance and protected behind one or more sets of locked doors. When they leave a secure area, they are padlocked into their transport boxes or carts.<\/p>\n

Colorado\u2019s Democrats, Republicans and unaffiliated voters have all surpassed their 2016 turnouts. Unaffiliated voters, who make up the state\u2019s largest voting bloc, have turned out at markedly higher rates \u2014 more than 1 million votes cast \u2014 than Democrats or Republicans, who have turned in roughly 900,000 and 790,000 votes, respectively.<\/p>\n

Historically, Democrats tend to vote earlier than Republicans. As of December 2019, unaffiliated voters make up at least 40% of the state\u2019s total registrations.<\/p>\n

More than 3.7 million people are registered to vote in Colorado.<\/p>\n

That number may rise on Election Day. Colorado law allows for same-day registration, meaning that someone can register for the first time or change their registration details on the same day that they vote. And military and overseas voters get an extra eight days after Election Day to make sure their ballots arrive in the county.<\/p>\n

In other words, there\u2019s still a long way to go before every ballot has been counted. And even for the ones that have been processed, the state and counties will not officially tabulate and release any preliminary results until after 7 p.m. on Tuesday.<\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/em><\/p>\n

The Colorado Sun is a reader-supported, journalist-owned news outlet exploring issues of statewide interest. Sign up for a newsletter and read more at coloradosun.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

Read more at The Colorado Sun<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

two-thirds of registered voters have cast their ballots<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50659,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[233,266,28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-50658","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-coloradosun-com","tag-election","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50658","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50658"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50658\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50659"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50658"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50658"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50658"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=50658"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}