EL PASO COUNTY — Thousands of ballots were rejected after June's primary election in El Paso County, a majority of which were from unaffiliated voters who voted on more than one ballot.
El Paso County Clerk and Recorder Steve Schleiker presented to county commissioners Tuesday morning detailing the number of ballots whose votes did not count.
2,432 unaffiliated voters turned in both the Democratic and Republican party ballots. While Colorado law allows unaffiliated voters to participate in primaries, they can only do so for one party.
"They do not get an opportunity to come in and cure that ballot, so it is really like your voice, your vote did not count at all," Schleiker told News5. "As close as some of our races are here locally, could they have had an impact? Maybe, but again, I feel everybody's voice should be heard."
Voters who have a signature discrepancy get the opportunity to fix or "cure" their ballots by letting the county know it was or was not themselves who voted. Schleiker said there were a similar number of unaffiliated voters who turned in both ballots during the March Presidential primary in Colorado.
"We're sitting there trying to, you know, look at how can we better message just vote one ballot, but the good news is here in the November general election, we won't have to worry about that now," Schleiker said. "It's just a thing of how do we message that to our unaffiliated voters?"
Data presented during Tuesday's meeting also showed three deceased voters, election officials made clear during Tuesday's meeting this number was not from people voting on a deceased person's ballot. Instead, it was a ballot returned to them by a family member denoting that person had passed away. Ballots have boxes for people to check to let the county know if someone has moved or passed away.
"We have worked extremely hard on the voter rolls here in El Paso County, but it takes more than the clerk and recorder staff," Schleiker said, "We need help from everybody where if somebody has moved, please mark that on there, put it in the USPS system where it comes back to us or if somebody has deceased."
In instances where someone cast a ballot and then passed away before Election Day, in Colorado their vote still counts, in other states their ballot would not be counted.
"We actually get all of the death certificates that are filed with the Colorado Department of Health up in Denver, where we match that data, and we actually will sit there and screen that data, where we will sit there and match up the date when a ballot is cast to the date that a person is deceased. And so if those dates do not match up, where if we're looking on a death certificate and we're seeing that this person passed away, let's say, you know, early June, but they cast their ballot mid-June, something is not right," Schleiker said.
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