About a week ago, the Denver Elections Division told me there is "No guarantee" their voting systems will not go down on election day. (See previous diary) Now they have announced that Sequioa Voting Systems 'lost' over 11,000 Denver mail-in ballots prior to mailing the ballots to voters and neither Sequoia nor Denver Elections Division flagged the error!! The US Postal Service flagged the error.
Link to Channel 7 News story...
More than 11,000 ballots went missing when the vendor in charge of printing the ballots, Sequoia Voting Systems, reported delivering 21,450 ballots to a Denver mail processing facility on Oct. 16, but the U.S. Postal Service said they only received 10,364 ballots that day.
Stephanie O'Malley, Denver's clerk and recorder, led an investigation by the Denver Elections Division that discovered Sequoia Voting Systems didn't prepare the mail-in ballots because of a technical problem with a data file.
This one little mistake represents over 5% of the 186,000 mail-in ballots requested in Denver!
But it gets worse. The Denver Elections Division doesn't even require that the out-of-state vendor Sequoia Voting Systems deliver the ballots to the Elections Division for inspection prior to mailing! The ballots are actually produced by Sequoia and delivered directly to USPS for mailing without the Denver Elections Division ever taking physical possession of the ballots to verify they are printed correctly and in the correct quantity!
These ballots are literally drop-shipped directly from Sequoia Voting Systems to voters (or not) without the Elections Division having to be bothered with any pesky details surrounding quality control of the process or the physical ballots.
Despite this ineffective hands-off approach adopted by the Elections Division, Denver County Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O'Malley refuses to accept any responsibility:
"Be patient with us. We certainly apologize for the delay, but it's certainly not one that we had any control over," said O'Malley.
There you have it folks - not only does the Elections Division never take possession of the ballots to perform even a cursory quality inspection, they actually disavow having any control over the situation. According to the Denver Clerk and Recorder, it is totally out of their hands - quite literally. This is an absolute OUTRAGE!
The problem was finally reported by the US Postal Service (not by the Elections Division nor the vendor involved) and over one week after the incomplete batch of ballots were submitted for mailing.
Now that the USPS has kindly identified the problem, Sequoia will make yet another attempt at printing and mailing the ballots while Clerk and Recorder Stephanie O'Malley reminds us to be patient and keep in mind that nobody that should have control over the process in fact does.
And according to the Denver Clerk's News Release of Oct 25, they are still not going to receive and inspect the ballots prior to mailing! Good grief.
Likewise, I can report that the Obama Campaign for Change office in Parker, Colorado told me last night that there have been numerous reports of lost mail-in ballots in nearby Douglas County, Colorado. I partially fact-checked this by briefly phone banking at their office and in just a few minutes spoke with a voter who had not received her ballot even though the public record showed it had been mailed weeks before.
Any Colorado voter who has already signed up for a mail-in ballot but has not received one, should immediately contact your county clerk's office to verify the status.
You can also check the status of your mail-in ballot online using the following link at the Colorado Secretary of State Elections Center
One voter I know who used the Secretary of State's website last week discovered he was not signed up for a mail-in ballot even though he thought he was! This can easily happen in Colorado because if you do not check the box for a permanent mail-in ballot, they will only send one for a single election cycle. If that cycle has come and gone, you will not receive a mail-in ballot again for this current election without requesting one again.
Please vote in Colorado via a mail ballot or during early voting.
If using a mail-in ballot, you can hand deliver it instead of mailing it in. If you do mail it in, don't forget to use enough postage which varies depending on the size of your ballot.
Do not wait until the likely long lines or other problems that may arise on election day.