COLORADO SPRINGS, Colorado — More than 9,200 voters in Colorado Springs have returned their ballots for the April 4 City Election. That amounts to roughly a 3 percent turnout during the first week of voting.
The City Clerk's Office introduced a new feature on their web page this week that lets the public track voter turnout. The data are updated daily as election workers collect ballots from the postal service and the 26 secure drop box locations throughout the city.
Clerk Sarah Johnson explained that returned ballots are scanned in their return envelopes and that data is used to create an interactive map tracking voter turnout at both the city council district level, as well as the precinct level.
"We don't know if there's a ballot in there or not. We just know we got it back," Johnson said. "So, there are no totals, there's no early release that this candidate is ahead of this candidate. We don't know either."
She said the city used to provide this data to campaigns for a fee. Those campaigns would then use the information for get-out-the-vote efforts. The decision was made to release the turnout data publicly to be more transparent.
Voters must return their ballots by 7:00 p.m. on Election Day, Tuesday, April 4 to be counted.
If you plan to return your ballot by mail, remember to include enough postage and make sure to get it to the post office at least 1 week before election day.
CLICK HERE TO VISIT THE CITY'S INTERACTIVE VOTER TURNOUT MAP
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